Barrage balloon and wires

[Xjazz]

Hi

Anybody tried to build a barrage balloon with wire? I build a few test versions. The barrage balloon with several lod's is not the problem but the functional wire is.

Wire specification:
1. Must be collide on
2. appears thick at closest point, gets thinner to the ends and finally disappear to the distance.
3 Die & disappear with barrage balloon object.


Here we go

1. NoCollide=0, Check

2. I was testing the B-balloon with different build-in wires. I tried a single and multi polyline wire objects but I didn't like how those shows up from different distances & angles. IMO The single center point is the problem.

The solution was a 500ft long wire object with two lod's for two different partially transparent materials. I stack these 500ft wires in TE to the intent height and add barrage balloon to the top. Check.

http://warezhouze.1g.fi/Here/AH/pics/BB1.jpg


3. Well, now I'm in trouble. The single object barrage balloon with build-in wire would work like a charm but that wire appearing... The nicely appearing stacked wire objects must kill one by one... FUBAR >8^|


I guess the stacked wire object groups would work ok in air-race, KOTH, and h2h FFA kind of "friendly" scenes.



HTC, how about some parent/kids object hierarchy and sense & action relation for TE object groups in next version?

.baba2k5: 2500ft Barrage balloon object group in TE
.kids 1
.......bbtruck1: towing truck, the parent
.......kids 1
............bind1: 1 die = all dies group
............kids 6
...............barbal1 (barrage balloon)
...............wire5 (500ft wire)
...............wire5 (500ft wire)
...............wire5 (500ft wire)
...............wire5 (500ft wire)
...............wire5 (500ft wire)

Kill the truck and all the rest dies.
Kill the balloon and wire(s) die too.
Kill the wire and the balloon dies too.

[Bullethead]

Looks very nice .

Question....  It's my understanding that the balloons with the single cable below were used mostly by ships at sea.  However, over land installations, they strung nets between the balloons, which is why they were called barrages, and which was why the Germans built those big bumpers all the way across the front of some buffs.  That was to plow through the netting.  Cutting individual vertical wires could be handled internally in the wing LE.

So, how would you do the big horizontal hanging nets?

[Bogie603rd]

Ehem, are we forgetting London? London placed huge ballons 10,000 FT in the air to prevent ME-109's from flying in. If they attempted to do so, they would collide with the ballons... Ouch:rolleyes: (Don't tell me they didn't, I have diaries of Spitfire Pilots that continouslly talked about these balloons floating around London.)

[Bullethead]

I'm not forgetting London.  I was talking specifically about London, in fact, because I've seen pics of the stuff I'm talking about flying over the place.  In both World Wars, I might add.  A "barrage balloon" held up part of a "barrage", which was net strung horizontally between multiple balloons, and hanging down vertically, to create a wall in the sky.

The individual balloons with just their own cable hanging down, with no connection horizontally to other balloons, were mostly used just over ships.  Obviously, they couldn't be tied together in this case.  Still, that 1 cabel did have the effect of making it harder for low-alt nme bombers to press home their attacks, because it hampered flying directly over the ship after the pass.  This made the nme have to break off the run earlier, which limited the accuracy of bombing/torping, and also reduced the effectiveness of strafing.

[Bogie603rd]

Okay, I must have mis-understood some things in your comment.

[Bullethead]

Found a pic of what I was talking about.  It dates from 1917 but they used the same thing in WW2, also.  In WW1, they had a solid ring of this stuff around London running roughly Biggin Hill - Gravesend - North Weald - Ware - St. Albans - Staines - ENE of Guildford - Biggin Hill.

This is from The Sky on Fire:  The First Battle of Britain 1917-1918, by Raymond H. Fredette.  Truly a fascinating book.  You can't help but be both awed at the men who attempted the 1st Blitz, and amused that so many people on both sides took them seriously, given the inadequacy of their equipment.

[Bogie603rd]

Okay... First thing I wanted to mention. In WWII, the balloons were also used as observation tools. Also, these balloons had the first people to ever use the parachute! Intersting that they value an observer more than a pilot.

 And another thing... THE PICTURE ISNT WORKING.