Campaign For Pat's BoB

[33lima]

I get that I think, but the problems are:

1. the dymanic reticle when 'at rest' is too low - assuming 'neutral' G, it should not look like this, it should be centred in the glass.

2. the dymanic reticle up-down movement is way too much, as the pilot's head isn't mounted on a bungee cord (left-right movement is ok because the head then acts as a pendulum if side forces are applied).

It should look like this under positive G in a tight turn, displaced little or not at all...

...certainly not like this, dragged off below the glass completely...

Dampening the vertical component to the head-bobbing might help, but as it isn't excessive, I'm reluctant to do that. CloD also has head bobbing which is at least as pronounced yet it doesn't have this exaggerated up-down reticle displacement.

Item 1 needs a fix if nothing else and it would slightly mitigate the tendency of the reticle to disappear off the bottom of the glass, so that would be something. Could that be achieved by changing one of the co-ordinates for the reticle type in use, in its 'Efffects' line, I wonder? EDIT - changing the Y value didn't seem to make much if any difference. I see the static reticle is also low on the glass and I suppose moving either reticle up would just destroy such alignment as there is now between the reticle and the bullet trajectories. So I think I'll just 'bite the bullet' (sic) and stick to the static reticle which at least doesn't stray off the bottom of the glass under strong positive G.

 

[MajorMagee]

You really should try adjusting the offset scale, as it may do exactly what you are looking for.

The positioning of the dynamic reticle in the effects line does not change the center of the aim point. It simply moves the effects texture around in the cockpit 3d space. The values are chosen so that the texture is positioned to align with the reflector glass so that the reticle will become visible. The 3D model of the cockpit includes the reflector glass, and that defines where the reticle will become visible. Position the texture away from the reflector glass and you'll never see the reticle.

The pitch value in the effects line does move the center aim point up or down within the texture space so that it lines up with the convergence point (off in the distance), but that doesn't change you eye point relative to the reflector glass inside the cockpit.

Likewise the starting eye position of the pilot is defined in the cockpit 3D model. That means the starting view cannot be changed without having the source code for the cockpit. That's why I have to trick the positioning using the TrackIR recentering function described previously to sit higher in the cockpit.

 

[Pat Pattle]

I can certainly take a look at the source model. The reticle is placed on a flat plane behind the sight glass and is fixed. It only appears to move as the viewpoint changes. As far as I remember it's inline with the viewpoint. Maybe with the latest cfs3 advances the reticle can be stuck back on the glass.
Do the Spits have this issue too?
I can't get to this until after the weekend unfortunately.

Great and interesting work all!

Cheers,

Clive

 

[33lima]

OK so if this isn't just me seeing issues nobody else sees, in the current BoB mod Hurricane II (and possibly in the other BoB mod Hurris) we could use:

1. for the dynamic reticle, the pitch value (not the Y value I tried fruitlessly) needs adjusted to raise the centre dot of the reticle (when 'at rest') so that it's in the centre of the glass; and then
2. if as seems likely this means the tracers now converge well below the raised reticle centre point, adjust (raise?) the pilot viewpoint in the aircraft's .m3d file so that line of sight and trajectory where the tracers converge co-incide, again.
3. if the mod isn't going to be changed to use the dynamic reticle by default, do the equivalent for the static reticle (which is also low on the glass). Hopefully the same pilot viewpoint will suit both reticles, as they both look to be to low to the same extent. I don't know where the equivalent setting to 1 is, for the static reticle.

I haven't tried the other BoB mod Hurris yet, or its Spits, but will have a look and report back.

All this reminds me of the story, told by a Camel pilot (possibly Norman McMillan in 'Into the Blue') of a visit by Trenchard to the squadron. The great man paused to admire one Camel whose pilot had two or three separate sights installed for his twin Vickers, and asked the pilot to explain how he made use of them. 'Oh I just point the nose at the Hun and blaze away!' the pilot innocently replied, Trenchard moving quickly on as they say.

 

[33lima]

Well in the dynamic reticle's Effects line, changing... Pitch="90.25" ...to... Pitch="88.25" ...as near as makes no difference put the reticle in the centre of the glass...

As expected, the tracers now converge too low, roughly where the vertical tick meets the reticle's outer ring - the tracers are still rising to that point, in the pic below....

So this is useless without also an equivalent adjustment to the pilot's viewpoint, to re-align things. But maybe a start if that can be done too.

The movement of the reticle under G is still too severe - it can still disappear completely off the bottom of the glass in a tight turn. I think I will try MajorMagee's suggestion of reducing the head bobbing in the DX mod's settings file, from the default OffsetScale=100, to something like 50 and see if that tames it while preserving enough head movement.

 

[33lima]

Reducing offsetscale from 100 to 50 preserves quite a high degree of head-bobbing (in relation to the cockpit) and dampens down the dynamic reticle to the point there is very little movement - it's apparent but 'very little'.

So I've gone with a value of 75, which has a bit more reticle movement - up-down seems comparable to CloD, left-right seems less so which is fine by me as CloD's left-right head-bobbing and reticle movement, whether realistic or not, I find a bit on the wild side.

High G descending turn to the left - reticle is slightly low and slightly left - fine by me:

Note the greater extent of visibility of the lower row of instruments on the main panel compared to the previous nearly-straight-and-level pic, which indicates the degree of head-bobbing that is still present when set to 75 instead of 100..

That would leave:

- adjusting (raising?) the pilot viewpoint to get the points of aim and impact lined up again, there are keystrokes to do this which I haven't tried but probably needs the 3d model changed to do it right; and
- finding the setting which raises the static reticle on the glass, so it all lines up whichever reticle the player is using (unless the mod fully incorporates the dynamic reticles, which might be a good idea being inherently more real - not that I've ever used anything more like it than a red dot sight).

 

[MajorMagee]

I take it that you don't have TrackIR?

 

[33lima]

I have TIR4, and find it a lot better than FacetrackNoir which was very skittish, but find turning the head while gyro-stabilising the eyes counter-intuitive.

 

[Daiwilletti]

Campaign(s) Progress

On the gunsight alignment, I keep the gyroscopic effect damped in the .ini, and I don't seem to have any problem with the crosshairs aligning with the tracer impact point.
Maybe its because I am shorter?

The seven campaigns I've prepared are coming along nicely, but there are always new niggly adjustment needed. A change to the starting frontline here, an invasion set to "on" that somehow slipped through and only discoverd after an hour of testing.

The habit of CFS3 of randomly assigning Allied countries to any old Allied airfields is a real pain. To completely restrict all RAF_10_Group squadrons to 10_Group airfields would require that the 10_Group global layer only have 10_Group airbases on it for the Allied side. This would make the map of airbases very lop-sided - does it mean that the Germans could walk all over Eastern Britain, when all the Allied airbases are along the West coast in the 10_Group campaign?

Haven't had time to get into such detailed scenario testing as it takes a while just to set up the GL.

Bomber campaigns can be just as tricky. Flying as a German bomber pilot, the default aircraft is the He111-H2 for some reason. It requires a fairly long run-up for takeoff. Luckily I don't need the loadouts with the additional wing fuel tanks to reach southern England. Airfields are the target quite frequently. Last night I discovered that the reason why 8 He111s cannot reach 100% when bombing an airfield, is that the damage points for all the placed trees are incredibly high! Variations of "9999" and "99999". These damage points are all summed in the damage evaluation. Trees half a million, buildings a few tens of thousands. So my wing of bombers gets left with 43% damage still required to meet the mission objective, after each emptying 8x250Kg bombs on the airbase!

Tweaks last night to the trees (I hope Clive doesn't mind ) will hopefully solve that quirk.

Another 'challenge" for the bombers - CFS3 does not assign bombers to LW airbases with longer runways. There are dozens of LW runways of only 800m in length! Again, a few quiet tweaks to the runway800 object file seem to have fixed the problem - hope Clive doesn't spot it, not obvious to the naked eye and you don't notice when taking off in German fighter. But my AI bomber wingmen just scrape over the trees, which is the main thing.

Oh well, only about a hundred similar tweaks needed to improve campaign play over seven campaigns

 

[33lima]

All sounds good there!

As for lining up the tracers with the reticle, they line up fine if you leave the reticle too low, as in this 257 Sqn Hurri's reticle (all the BoB Hurris are the same):

The alignment is fine but is not the problem - which is that the reticle is loo low on the glass. And if you move it up to centre it, like this...

...it is now higher than the line of fire. These two pics are of the dynamic reticle in the modified 17 Sqn Hurri, but it's the same with the static reticle.

The easiest thing to do is leave it alone and put up with the low reticle...although it does looks rather silly once you compare with what it should look like. And if using the dynamic reticle, reduce the default the head bobbing offset value in the DX mod's .ini file from 100 to 75, which stops even the too-low dynamic reticle from disappearing off the bottom of the glass, which solves the worst problem. And if you actually like the cockpit looking like it's painted onto your screen and have head bobbing turned off, you don't need to do anything. Just tolerate the reticle being too low in the glass.

The BoB mods Spits are fine, tho I've not adapted any to use the dynamic reticle yet. The only issue is it has the later square glass and straight side brackets, instead of the correct one on the Hurricanes. Range adjustment dial also seems to be missing on the Spit sights; the Hurris have both range and base but they are the wrong way around, if the CloD one is correct. (range should be on top not underneath)

Anyway I'm looking forward to seeing lots of Huns through both sights in the new campaigns, as well as in the scripted missions!

 

[MajorMagee]

As mentioned a couple of times the reticle pitch can remain aligned with the proper convergence point, and then be raised on the reflector glass by using the recentering function of TrackIR.

 

[33lima]

Presumably that's for the dynamic reticle only, as the static reticle stays...static, too low on the glass?

For the dynamic reticle, the best solution I can come up with suitable for non-TrackIR use is to leave the dynamic reticle at its default height and use CFS3's 'Move eyepoint up' command (Shift+Enter) which moves everything up and therefore keeps reticle and tracers aligned. The reticle is a bit too high but better that, than too low, and 'more sky, less panel' is better for combat.

 

[Daiwilletti]

All sounds good there!

As for lining up the tracers with the reticle, they line up fine if you leave the reticle too low, as in this 257 Sqn Hurri's reticle (all the BoB Hurris are the same):

The alignment is fine but is not the problem - which is that the reticle is loo low on the glass. And if you move it up to centre it, like this...

...it is now higher than the line of fire. These two pics are of the dynamic reticle in the modified 17 Sqn Hurri, but it's the same with the static reticle.

Hi 33Lima, have you tried altering the pilot's eyepoint in the seat position settings in the Hurricane xdp file? What does that do?

 

[33lima]

No I haven't tried that yet mate. I wasn't sure if it was set in the .xdp or model files, as the former just has this and it wasn't obvious to me if anything here affected the position of the viewpoint, as opposed to its behaviour.

Seat Name="Pilot">
<Stations>
<Station Name="Pilot" Type="pilot_station" View="0" FovUp="20" FovDown="30">
<PadlockLimit AzimuthMin="-154" AzimuthMax="154" ElevationMax="90" ElevationMin="-55"/>
<Views>
<View Event="HeadStop"/>
<View Event="HeadPitchUp" Azimuth="0" Elevation="-35"/>
<View Event="HeadPitchDown" Azimuth="0" Elevation="30"/>
<View Event="HeadPitchUpLeft" Azimuth="-45" Elevation="5"/>
<View Event="HeadPitchUpRight" Azimuth="45" Elevation="5"/>
<View Event="HeadRotLeft" Azimuth="-90" Elevation="-5"/>
<View Event="HeadRotRight" Azimuth="90" Elevation="-5"/>
<View Event="HeadPitchDownLeft" Azimuth="-154" Elevation="0"/>
<View Event="HeadPitchDownRight" Azimuth="154" Elevation="0"/>
</Views>

As well as not knowing how to move up the default pilot viewpoint to align with a raised dynamic reticle, I suspect the static reticle will also need moved up as not everyone will be using the former. Adding the dynamic reticle's effects line to the .xdp 'magically' replaces the static reticle but I can't work out from that how to edit (move up) the static reticle. Using the keyboard command to raise the eyepoint up raises everything but leaves the rounds going too high, which demonstrates that if raising the default viewpoint in the .xdp, ir will also be necessary to move up the static reticle into the centre of the glass:

At the moment I have the dynamic reticle applied only to the 17 Sqn Hurri and raising the eyepoint via keystroke lifts the reticle by about what's needed (and gives me more sky and less panel, which is also good) without losing alignment with the tracers. It's a minor nuisance and would be a better default viewpoit for both static and dynamic reticles in the Hurricanes - provided we could also move up the static reticle to the centre of the glass.

PS I've noticed recently that the BoB Hurris are missing a reflector sight in the external view, but have it in the ETO version - have I broken something?

 

[Daiwilletti]

I'm really pleased with progress on the BoB campaign package. Gameplay flows reasonably well on all the campaigns, whether from an RAF fight or bomber, or a Luftwaffe fighter or bomber pilot's perspective. Mind you, it is hard to find the time to test seven different campaigns thoroughly.

Below, my Heinkel 111 flight is directed to attack a facility on the southern coast of England.



Turns out it is RAF Ford airbase. We encounter very little resistance, but arrive high at 24,000 feet - too high for accurate bombing.



After the first few salvos of 250kg bombs, the mission goal is still at 60% However even having a mission goal is a bit of a win. AFAIK there are no other freeware addons where you can fly a campaign strike mission against an airbase (because there is no such campaign missiontype in CFS3).



All up it was a smooth flight, enemy aircraft were too low to climb to reach us on the return journey. My LW He111 wingmen landed successfully at Beaumont-le-Roger. Note how the first wingman has taxiied to the end of the runway, and turned to face the oncoming AI pilots. I've never seen that before.

 

[Daiwilletti]

Ju88s taxiing

Just a bit of fun. I added a pathway to a LW airbase (Laon) in Pat's BoB. Then put in a Ju88 as a vehicle. It should be sweet, but unfortunately CFS3 takes the m3d model and, as a vehicle, renders it parallel to the ground. Hence a tail-dragger ends up floating the tail up. I haven't blanked out the prop in the dds texture yet. At this stage I've forgotten how to get a sound track for the vehicle, but at least the dust emitter is reasonably well located.

The Boston works a lot better as a taxiing vehicle, because of its tricycle undercarriage.

 

[Oliver]

This really looks and sounds interesting. Can't wait