Focus Test - Flying Circus

[GOPHUR]

Flying Circus

This test is more strictly an air to air thing, to gain perspective and feedback from fighting above and below the heavy cloud layer as a tactical element of the dogfight. Again, players taking part in this test should fly to and around the AO placed for the ground battle in order to all concentrate at the one location and to provide good possibilities for ground based AA to partake in the feedback testing. Pilots should try to eschew “plane favoritism” and make every attempt to take part in all manner of different aircraft rather than just the best available or their favorite type. A more sporting atmosphere regarding “winning and losing” will help to make this a fun thing to stage as a part of our testing evaluations.

Please use this thread for feedback on the Flying Circus and general dog fighting feedback. Specific bugs should also be posted as a separate thread.

[tazz]

Spit IX MG tracer rounds have an upper and lower mirror image when firing. Cannon rounds seem better aligned but off by a little bit. I'll check other planes to see if it's similar.

The bottom tracers seem closer and the upper tracers seem to be more distant.

.conv = 125

[Jizzyjaz]

I noticed a change to the way the speed trees load in while flying, its now just a concentric circle around your plane. In the old version the creation of the speed trees as you went along were not nearly as noticable because the color wasn't quite as bright green. But now in 1.31 as i look at the ground it is REALLY obvious.

IMO Any attempts to make it less noticeable failed and it is worse than before. I hate to bring this up here as an opinion, but just hop in a plane and look down at the forests as you fly along, it looks really tacky.

My suggestion is to have the speed trees slowly fill in from less dense to More dense as you fly along.

[ghostrider]

Tracer Bug mentioned earlier...

This was in the Spit9...but i've seen it in all the spitfires...haven't extensively tested it in other aircraft yet.

During a moderate climb tracers either come out very low or bounce around in the reticule; makes aiming very difficult.

tQ4wszVp81I

still havent figured out embedding youtube videos in this forum

Edited March 20, 2010 by ghostrider

[hick]

still havent figured out embedding youtube videos in this forum

Took care of it for you.

To embed a youtube video, enter following code into your post

[noparse] [/noparse]

Where is the Alpha-numeric code (highlighted in red in this example) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQ4wszVp81I in the Youtube address

[ghostrider]

thanks; video should be higher quality when it finishes processing so you can actually see what im talking about

[ghostrider]

Spit IX MG tracer rounds have an upper and lower mirror image when firing. Cannon rounds seem better aligned but off by a little bit. I'll check other planes to see if it's similar.

The bottom tracers seem closer and the upper tracers seem to be more distant.

.conv = 125

Here is a video of that tracer bug; best quality/visibility that i could get

ffk3iBtEXS4

but if you play the video in HD you'll see that the tracer rounds appear to come out low they warp up High then warp back down low....

The only possible explanation as to why this is happening that I can see is that at various distances there are actually different sprites (correct term?) for the tracer rounds....they come out of the guns in oblong/oval shaped rounds but after about 200m or so they switch over to circle shaped sprites; during this switch the tracers warp up about 5m or at least appear to.

Aiming at EA past 200m is difficult to correct your aim because your eyes follow the tracers out and then the tracers jump up when they get close to your target.

[slpr2]

Compass and Altimeter still broken in 1.31.0.31.

[ghostrider]

Here is a better video of the tracers hoping around after they reach about 200 or 300m

http://www.filefront.com/15956423/tracersbug3.wmv

[DOC]

Not sure what your issue is, but we should investigate it with you asmuch as your are able to give us specifics of your rig, etc..

I just tested the worst convergance fighter of the lot (12 wing guns covering a very wide cross section horizontally, in the Hurricane IIb) and at the point of convergance all bullets and tracers passed right through the pipper (aim point) in static test rig brace.

These (above results) were at 150m convergance setting

If you're flying, depending on your framerates and other flight parameters (G loading, AoA etc) you won't be able to get as tight a group through the pipper. But aligning the guns in a static rig, where there are no flight variables contributing to the bullet pattern at range, they are spot on.

This is actually how they set up the guns in a real fighter aircraft during the war.

[hick]

Not sure what your issue is, but we should investigate it with you asmuch as your are able to give us specifics of your rig, etc..

I just tested the worst convergance fighter of the lot (12 wing guns covering a very wide cross section horizontally, in the Hurricane IIb) and at the point of convergance all bullets and tracers passed right through the pipper (aim point) in static test rig brace.

If you're flying, depending on your framerates and other flight parameters (G loading, AoA etc) you won't be able to get as tight a group through the pipper. But aligning the guns in a static rig, where there are no flight variables contributing to the bullet pattern at range, they are spot on.

This is actually how they set up the guns in a real fighter aircraft during the war.

Hey Doc, quick ?. At some point in the future, do you think it would be possible to implement a test rig like that in Offline so we can use it to test different convergences/practice shooting at convergence?

[DOC]

It wouldn't do anything to help you, it would just confirm that at .conv 200 your bullets are all converging at 200 meters. It wouldn't help you shooting while flying at all. If you learn what range you get your best deflection and non deflection shots landed, and set your convergance to that, then you can trust that's what your bullets are set to.

I can only employ what I did above by using internal development (logging) client tools. We can't make that functionality public, we'd have to build a differant set of public tools you could use that weren't development capable and thus allow cheating if you know what I mean.

Since the actual benefit would be almost zero (all it does is determine your bullets go where they are supposed to) it would be a wasted use of resources with little return to you or us.

What you need are flying targets that report range from you and hit success when shot at. That would give you what you need, but I don't see that happening for quite some time. It would be very nice, and I would love it because it would help tons of people.

[hick]

It wouldn't do anything to help you, it would just confirm that at .conv 200 your bullets are all converging at 200 meters. It wouldn't help you shooting while flying at all. If you learn what range you get your best deflection and non deflection shots landed, and set your convergance to that, then you can trust that's what your bullets are set to.

I can only employ what I did above by using internal development (logging) client tools. We can't make that functionality public, we'd have to build a differant set of public tools you could use that weren't development capable and thus allow cheating if you know what I mean.

Since the actual benefit would be almost zero (all it does is determine your bullets go where they are supposed to) it would be a wasted use of resources with little return to you or us.

What you need are flying targets that report range from you and hit success when shot at. That would give you what you need, but I don't see that happening for quite some time. It would be very nice, and I would love it because it would help tons of people.

Actually I was hoping for it because it would be an awesome testing tool if coupled with fleshed out damage models offline. You guys with all your fun toys to test this and that make me a wee bit jealous

[DOC]

Did you think there was no reason at all to become a game developer ?

[hick]

Did you think there was no reason at all to become a game developer ?

not at all what I was getting at. I enjoy doing stuff like that is all. In fact, figuring out how and why sthings work is more fun that watching the result of it working, to me anyway.

EDIT: Yea, color me stupid on this one. Completely misread Doc's response. Hey, I'm a Hick, I'm allowed to be slow .

[Slpr]

Actually I was hoping for it because it would be an awesome testing tool if coupled with fleshed out damage models offline. You guys with all your fun toys to test this and that make me a wee bit jealous

that's what squads/trainings server are for?

so long slpr

[hick]

that's what squads/trainings server are for?

so long slpr

cannot set up like that on the training server.

[DOC]

You missed my point, which was meant with humour that you may also have missed. If you want dev. tools that let you do stuff the client is not meant to do, then become a developer. There are ways we could make learning to aim/hit stuff easier to learn, but that would:

a) not require dev. tools being publically available (which would let you cheat if you were clever enough)

will require dev. resources we simply haven't been able to put to those tasks, because we are the tiniest dev. team in existance (well almost) with the biggest most complicated live development game project you could probably hope to have to manage

I got your point immediately. I tried to deflect the answer "no" with both a little bit of in house humour and some redirection to a more pertinent point. I thought "sorry but no" wouldn't be quite so nice and gentle.

Now, back to the real point of this thread. Reports from the open beta, what is broken and what needs work, or at least what might need doing so we can birth this monster before it kills us.

[frantish]

...so we can birth this monster before it kills us.

Water break yet? (reader is open to interpret who and how. )

This issue seems more graphic then bullet arc?

[DOC]

Well I can't replicate what the OP was posting (and screenshotted) so I'm more interested in what makes him see that and we see something different. The bullets are ballistically doing what they are supposed to and when I tested this in the latest .31 build they visually do what they are supposed to as well.

So now I want to know what makes his experience different. That means starting with the basics, video card, video drivers, render settings, the situation he screenshotted (vibration of airframe, G loading, whatever else would influence what he's seeing happen to the bullets as they render) ... all the criteria that might influence his results.

While the description "mirror image" is a reasonable one given what he's trying to describe, it isn't happening here and I can see no "mirror image" of tracers; so straight away we have an unusual and ... at least initially, difficult problem.

[ghostrider]

Here is a better video of the tracers hoping around after they reach about 200 or 300m

http://www.filefront.com/15956423/tracersbug3.wmv

DOC; did you see this video? i think this might show what the original poster is showing in his "mirror" image.

its not a mirror image, the tracers just seem to jump high as they transition around the 300m mark. so in your bullet stream you will see 1 stream of larger tracers below another stream of smaller tracers once they hit that point.

[DOC]

I tested all the aircraft after reading this report. We here saw nothing resembling what the OP was reporting. I tested the convergance and bullets through the pipper onto the target to eliminate any ballistic issues contributing, there were none.

We have no render issues either. That's as far as we've managed to get on this report. I haven't gone to coders yet to ask them to explain what they think it might be.

[GOPHUR]

1) Convergence and tracers

i'm KINDA seeing the issue and it is more apparent in the last video than others but I can only replicate it while moving. While still first and third person looks normal. I think what we're seeing here is a lot of round dispersion coupled with some really short convergences.

In the short bursts in that video it looks like the tracers are going out to say 500m and then bursting into multiple tracers. Is this accurate of what you are trying to describe?

No ticket yet on this issue. Need more info.

2) Broken gauges

Have another thread ant ticket for this.

3) Trees

Yeah these are looking fubar. Will ticket.

[GOPHUR]

oh tracers,

Here's what is going on, not sure of a fix.

There is a tracer trail that plays out to a set distance and then disappears. Where this disappears is where you begin seeing the actual points of light on the individual rounds that we're masked and/or made to look like one trail earlier.