C-SCOPE

While Dave is away hopefully keeping his head above water (all those Bear Grylls survival videos should come in handy) I've got not much else to do except worry and get on with my to-do list.

C-SCOPE was something I remember saying wouldn't make it but turned out to be a freebie since everything was available to simply drop it in.

[C-SCP] button on the FCR page overlays FCR target symbols on TADS video and HMD. Makes finding those hard to see vehicles a piece of cake.

C-SCOPE FCR symbols presented on the HMD

ref: http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/docs/ah-64-mfp-1-33.htm

The High Action Display is currently getting an update for the ACQ interaction (I've tried really hard to work through what this does and how I can gamify it to make something both usable and understandable by normal people).

Also I'm overjoyed at getting news of our ATC audio recordings and looking forward to playing with that.

Rain Stops Play - Bangkok Floods

Dave who is the artist on Combat-Helo is currently in the process of evacuating his home in Thailand as the floods in Bangkok have made living difficult. With no fresh drinking water for days, no supplies in the shops and place of work closed, services breaking down it's time to jump ship.

Blue indicates server flooding (clearly) Red=flood defence

BBC carries the story here

Dave's last act before evacuating was uploading the latest Chinook work to our server alas there was no time to upload the PSDs. Good luck and fingers crossed we'll hear from you in a week or a month... :(

Don't Panic

Yes Panic.

When you're rushing to get a reasonable build ready for hammering out problems I'm finding I'm making all new problems. Going over the HMD code I realise how badly it needs rebuilding, there are existing elements that need updating, a few new ones that require adding. There's no way to rebuild the HUD in time.

Another problem. LUA in the Apache entity. Works in the first instance, but fails in subsequent entity spawns resulting in the inability to mount the aircraft. It's an issue relating to LUA accessing keys stored in the model. I want to rip out all the LUA code from models except for the model initialisation that puts on pylons and attaches the rotor models. Not much time to deal with that either.

Dual Seat configuration.

The interaction between front and rear seat was not well thought out early enough, instead I opted for a 'duality' where all features could be operated from either seat with just some interface differences. I should have opted for a strict seat A can do xxxx and seat B can only do yyyy. This was a mistake in my attempt to simplify control but ended up introducing more complex logic.

It's not too late to undo this but a difficult process to start. If I have to design this game all over again I think I would probably nail down all of these problems from day one. Hindsight being wonderful.

TrippleHead - lot more pixels to post process, looks great but a GPU strain

Amazing what you can find on the internet today.

Not a Combat-Helo post. I'm engaged in a spot of design and research but was looking for some old material online and found I had left a digital trail pre-dating commercial internet use.

28 Years ago I drew this. I was in high school. Shocking really. I used Z80 machine code to generate the 'impressive' sound and visual effects in this game. *wince*

A lifetime of programming and tinkering, stacks of hard drives of unpublished projects ranging from Spanish school time-table generators to a Black Shark snapshot campaign generator.

Some material I doubt will ever be revived, the Memotech MTX 500 version of Next War was stored on cassette tape, probably oxidised beyond recovery. However the code lives on in other forms, the dynamic campaign system was enhanced and put to some use in a PC build. Some of which will form the backbone of the Combat-Helo campaign. One day I hope to merge the big war game with the Apache simulation and revisit the forgotten Fulda Gap scenario.

More unreleased WWIII fun and games
NATO vs Warsaw Pact at the Fulda Gap

Even my own attempt at producing a self-indulgent comic based on our exploits in the Star Wars Galaxies MMO...(PDF dug out of the old SONY Online game forums).

Even though the game will soon have the plug pulled the footprints we leave behind in the digital space will live on...for a bit.

I've rescued the original PDF and made it available here... Orion Outpost Chronicles part 4 - PDF

Anyway back to work.

Minigame...I mean gun

AD has started some great work on the armaments of the CH47 that will form the first major DLC pack for the full release of Combat-Helo. Each door position will offer a fun interactive activity, usually in the form of throwing out obscene amounts of virtual lead.

For more pictures please see: ADs SimHQ CH-47 blog update thread

Mini-gun, I don't get the mini part though.

Random Pics of the Day

Starting to feel the pressure now. Both the financial and stress factors are weighing in. Doesn't stop me working but it's hard to switch off. On the business side there's a ton of things on the to-do list, it all eats time taken from production.

Spooky, ok so the lip light isn't actually on his mic.
If it was you wouldn't see this.

Boeing sent me a poster back in 2002, this is a homage to that.

This time with the rear seat.

Taking out bad guys without damaging the good guys is a challenge.
Experimenting with simple TSD display and labels.

On top of this I'm studying some Unity material and shader programming. I could use a beer, a real one.

GROME 3.1 is out

Quadtree software has released the 3.1 update to Grome.

 Grome is a fantastic terrain editor I've been playing with for future enhancements and rolling out a larger terrain systems in the future. If you play flying games and RPGs on consoles chances are you've probably already seen a Grome edited terrain. It's used by nearly every major player in the simulation industry. Incorporating a plug-in system, OpenSceneGraph and now new improved Unity integration.

What's new in 3.1

I'm quite keen to see how it works in the up and coming Leadwerks 3(D) engine which is looking to sport threaded streaming of assets. If this could be incorporated alongside the vegetation system it would be perhaps the most powerful and complete 3D engine for less than 1,000 USD.

Did I mention the FCR offset?

Remember the spinny radar thingy in Longbow 2? Scan sectors sizes and off-axis settings for the Longbow FCR (Fire Control Radar)? No?

If you look at the heading tape of the screen-shot you'll see in the heading tape the "butt-cheeks" (two Ds back to back) on a heading of 225, off axis by 45 degrees. This indicates the direction the radar is pointing, as the FCR display is 'always up' in GTM mode. This can be a little disorientating and the radar footprint is mirrored on the TSD, this paints a clearer picture of where it's pointing. Failing that you can see the radome outside the aircraft turning as it seeks out the designated offset.

(And why are all our aircraft IDs Z666? We shall never know. If you have a TrackIR and explore the cockpit nooks there's even a Clint Eastwood reference in it).

Radar offset angle is set by clicking on either of the two LEFT RIGHT arrow buttons on the MPD or your designated sensor left/right control input when the FCR is your selected sensor. (If TADS is selected the sensor control steers TADS instead). NOTE: The offset can not be moved while the FCR is active, although you can queue movement by hitting the offset control then quickly cycling the FCR burst key. Got it?

It will be in the manual. Promise.

Vectors - all vectors, no bitmaps

In the front seat, TEDAC view of the FCR

Apache Maintainers

On the topic of fuel systems, someone shared this video recorded at an FOB. One of the more difficult jobs.

Fuel XFER

Dull day, so lets post about something most normal people find dull. Fuel flow controls. In the Apache D model this is administered on the FUEL MPD page.

Not much to say about it, I'm bored already. It does what it does. Our Apache has two internal ballistically shielded self-sealing fuel tanks. Fuel can be drawn or transferred from one or the other to adjust weight distribution. Activating fuel boost engages the rear tank cross-feed valves as seen here. Fuel transfer between tanks should normally be left to auto unless you feel the need to play with it. HTR flight model should take account of the weight distribution.

Marching ants

Fuel flow takes about 4 seconds to change, while changing, indicated fuel lines are drawn in high intensity white before returning to green.

The most important button on this page is bottom right [CHECK]. This brings up the a sub version of the page where you set your bingo fuel status if you get an alert reminder in the UFD.

Bingo Time

Award for dullest sim video goes to...."Fuel Crossfeed"..yeah. There it is. It's Friday.

Shaders the old fashioned way

Yes were still using Notepad to edit them. Well that's not quite accurate, I'm using Notepad++

What's nice about Leadwerks is being able to create a shader to add new effects or change how the engine renders something without anything getting in your way. So when Dave asks for a version of the cubemap that will blend in some particular way it was no problem to quickly put it together. He's doing terrible things to make filthy looking windshields, chrome toggle switches and this rather neat looking rear view mirror.

Who needs fancy wysiwyg editors....well it would be nice sometimes.

Dirty Mirror finish

It's a double rainbow! Testing blending and reflections.

AD posts more Chinook updates at SimHQ

AD posted more Chinook goodies at SimHQ Link here >>>  SimHQ - AD Chinook Update

What am I looking at?

It's a little creepy, crew heads now reflect the pilot helmet sight (PHS) and gunner helmet sight (GHS) Vec2 offsets, so using trackIR, mouselook etc will operate the appropriate crewman head position (with suitable organic tweening). These positions are stored in the aircraft state so will work across all aircraft (AI and player) as well as multi-player. How creepy is that?

"Everyone gets everything he wants."

"All I wanted was a mission,"

"and for my sins they gave me one"

Shot on my iPhone. This is what TrackIR and mouse movements do to the crew head positions.


*edit*

There's a few pages in the system that are informational only, the FUEL page was one, I fleshed it out a bit tonight, adding a working cross-feed system complete with animation (yes the real one does that too). It's lacking the fuel check and bingo settings (to be added later). Setting the bingo stat is part of your start-up checklist, it would be a shame to leave it out.

Combat-Helo Prologue wip Video in HD

Now available.

*edit* A few additional notes...

The controller setup page shown in this video has a number of devices listed. These are just the ones I had plugged in at the time of recording. All DirectInput controllers should be available, some will have ready to fly config files (most Saitek sticks, Logitech).



I forgot to turn on the post processing effects since I work without them (generates more heat). There is a LOT of changes going on to various sensors and the IHADSS won't be updated to reflect these changes until I've done the MPDs. So please no accuracy police, I'm aware of the various bits and bobs. It's all in hand.


YouTube Link: http://youtu.be/L8AHX8uXHpQ?hd=1
Vimeo Link: http://vimeo.com/29957378

Screenshot of the day

Cleanup in lanes 1,2,3,4,5 and 6 please.

Padlock, shoot, padlock shoot, HMD mode
cleans house at close range , almost too easy