Suggestion

[Falcon]

Hello. I'm a fan of Aces High. Your sim is great in my humble opinion. It has a lot of variety in it, like manning Ack, eight-inch guns from a battleship, driving landing craft, and so on. The greatest thing about Aces High is that its very disabled friendly.


Disabled friendly means that you have options for disabled sim players like myself. My disability is Cerebral Palsy. There are different forms of this, and luckily, I have it mildly. I can't talk, walk or use my left arm, mainly because its very spastic (very uncontrollable). I have very limited reach with my right thumb, so I really can't use my thumb for snap views in a combat situation. The only time I can use them is for a quick check six glances with my right index finger when I am engaged.


Anyway, I'm getting off topic here. There's not a lot of sims out there that have this "disabled friendly" praise from me, so I think Aces High will be very successful in all areas. However, like all of the sims out there, your sim has some problems. I know what you guys are thinking; this is a rant of its problems. I assure you, it is not. It is really a suggestion of improving a feature. The padlock.


The Aces High padlock is very original, by the way, but it has flaws. This feature might improve the snap views for the other players, which I can't use. During my off-line and on-line testing of the padlock, I found out that the padlock was limited to the snap view head position saving feature. This was kind of interesting for me. I also noticed in the snap view mode, you couldn't check six both right and left positions. Then I saw the flaw. When I pass my target, my "head" couldn't follow the target especially when it passed to my right mainly because I saved my six position to the left. This I had to do because the reach of the arrow keys and such. I could, at least, re-acquire the lock easily, but sometimes it is frustrating for me.


If you had the ability to somehow "mirror" the saved head position in the padlock mode so my "head" can realistically look behind both ways, that would be great. However, why not take it one step further to allow snap view users have the same thing? I'm not a software programmer or such, but the only thing I could think of doing this is to get rid of the back 45-degree angle snap views, so they can look behind both ways. This next point is minor, but I don't like the automatic 45-degree snap view in the padlock mode. I guess I'm used to the smooth panning padlocks, even though most are unrealistic. The padlock doesn't snap back in the front view sometimes. I don't know if that's a bug or a feature.


Thank you for taking the time for reading this post. I appreciate what you guys are doing with this awesome sim.

Erik "Falcon" Glascoe
Member of Cactus Air Force Squadron

[Guinness]

You could always re-map the keys to the head position you like?

F-10 key saves your head position, so you could easily remap the "1" and "3" key for example to look both ways down the fuselage.

I personally have this set-up, my "2" key on my numpad is fully pulled back (away from the headrest) and is directly in the center.  The further my view is from the headrest the smaller it gets.  Then i keep the 45-degree.  The 45-degree angle helps a lot when doing verticle attack dives, i find.

So press "2" on numpad, and while its helddown, press the "Down" cursor key and it wil move away from the headrest a little, then use "Page-Up" to get a little bit more Line-Of-Sight over the fuselage.  Hit "F-10" and it will save.

Im not sure if this is what you meant, but hope it helps.  

[GunnerCAF]

Falcon has his head positions saved.  To get a direct rear view, you need to save your position to the right or left of the head rest on most aircraft.  No matter how far you move your head position out, the seat blocks some view.  I think what Falcon is asking for is two rear views, one when you pan right, one when you pan left.  Much like when you look over your right shoulder or left shoulder.

Gunner <CAF>
CO, Cactus Air Force

[ 08-25-2001: Message edited by: GunnerCAF ]

[Falcon]

Yeah this is what I mean. Ability to pan both ways (I do know there's a pan mode but that'll be very frustrating   )

Falcon

[Fatty]

Hrm, if you could "save head position" after using the F8 (freelook), or put a rotation factor into head movement, then you could define each direction as you wanted.  (take back right position and just turn the head a bit, then save that as back right)

[Falcon]

bump.