Aircraft Sizes.

[Monkey]

Ok, i know this is going to be a sore subject, but..........the planes are small.  yes, they are probably modelled to exact realistic measurements, but we know nowaday monitors cant handle that, so the shapes are therefor small.  Using Z and [] you can ofcourse get a close up view.  However, this hurts SA as hte planes come in and out of view quicker.

Also what good is all that eye candy if ya cant see it  .  For all you monkeys iwht the "go play AW then" go suck a lemon.

I believe HTC has put out an excellent Beta.  In time it should be a great product.  I just hope that on this note they dont stick to the "purist" point of view.

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Monkey

[hitech]

Realy isn't a purist point of view.

Makeing the planes bigger effects lots of things. but primarly gunnery. By making the planes bigger you have made them easyer to hit at longer ranges. To fix that you need to change gunnery to make it harder at longer range but then you still have head on gunnery and close in gunnery to address.

You also have collision problems.

So I understand that in real life it's easyer to see planes than on the monitor but in my view makeing them bigger only create's more problems than it solves.

BTW on just a technical note there realy isn't any differance between making the planes bigger and slowing everything down.


HiTech

[Baaaaa Monkey]

<sniff><sniff><sniff>  Thxs for shooting me down  .  One question, how do i hit the brakes to slow everything down  .  Guess I will eventually get used to it, wont be happy but i will get used to it.  Anyways, it seems i am the Captain and only crew of this boat, soooooo..........i wont squeak about it anymore.  Well, until the more important issues are fixed  .

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BTW on just a technical note there realy isn't any differance between making the planes bigger and slowing everything down.


                         HiTech
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Monkey

[Ozymandias_KoK]

Hell, ozlikes the zoom.  Key is just to use it when needed, and not stay zoomed in.  Or, not put it where you used to have the up modifier for yer views, 'cos that'll mess you up.  

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TKoKFKA-OZDS-

[funked]

I'm with Hitech.  Remember the original Falcon and Aces of the Pacific with bloated plane sizes?  It was a @#$@#$ joke!

[Swager]

Hey! Get off of Aces of the Pacific funked!  I actually shot some planes down in there!!      

My fantasy is a updated re-make of SWOTL and Aces Over Series!:0

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Damn Ghostrider!  This bogey is all over me!!

[Toad]

HT,

Is it possible to increase plane size while keeping the plane damage map the current size?

We'd have larger planes that would help give us more realistic visual cues but possibly we could leave gunnery alone. You'd just have to shoot "center of mass" to do damage. Clipping wing tips or towards the edges of the image wouldn't do anything.

Is  this possible?

I'm all for realism, believe me. Unfortunately, mathematically precise plane sizes haven't given us realistic visual cues.

Given the multitude of other concessions that have been made to make these games "playable" it seems that we ought to be able to come up with a compromise here as well.

I'm not a fan of icons and I'd like to see us find another, more realistic, way to supply the visual cues.

[Toad]

Also, I don't understand what you're getting at with the size/slow down remark.

HT: "BTW on just a technical note there realy isn't any differance between making the planes bigger and slowing everything down."

Do you mean if the planes are larger the game will run slower or do you mean if we slow every thing down the planes will appear larger?

As I said, I miss your point here. Please explain.

[fats]

Toad, the game-universe will *appear* to go slower. FPS will be the same.

Right now a plane might be 10m long, flying 600km/h. That is it flies at 60000 plane lengths in an hour.

Make that plane 100m long and you are only flying at 6000 plane lengths per hour.

And to compensate for the larger plane size you'll have to scale up the rest of the world so it won't look funny next to the huge plane. So you'll get N times longer runways, N times taller buildings and so on, yet the plane flies at 600kmh and it takes a lot longer just to get from one end of the runway to the other. Cause you really wouldn't want to change the FM too so planes were faster.


//fats

[blur]

HT wrote:
"BTW on just a technical note there realy isn't any differance between making the planes bigger and slowing everything down."

That's heavy. Does this mean that if the universe is truly expanding that we're really g o i n g  s l o w  e  r  ?  

[hitech]

Sure it does blur it would take longer to cross the universe then, and if you don't know its getting bigger then you must think you are going slower

HiTech

[hitech]

Toad think about what you are asking for a moment. That would imply that where you see a bullet hit isn't where it would be. So you would see your bullets pass right threw wings and not get hits.

HiTech

[indian]

The plane sizes are fine it just takes a bit of time to get used to it. That and a bgigger monitor helps alot. I can see the p[lane at over 2k out. Plenty of time to adjust.

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Tommy (INDIAN) Toon
  Cherokee Indian
My Homepage
Where you can find the Key Commands in  files for Word6 Wordpad and text mode.

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Aces High Word6 and Wordpad Doc's available on my web site.

[214CaveJ]

I have to agree with indian.  They're fine, adjust your Mk I sight system =).  At 1.5k distance I can see them well enough to see which way they're turning

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Air power is a thunderbolt launched from an egg shell invisibly tethered to a base.         -  Hoffman Nickerson

[Toad]

First of all, I'm not asking anyone to make 10m planes into 100m planes.

As I've mentioned before, I think the way to go at this is to try incremental increases to _experiment_ while trying to find a size that gives us the necessary visual cues, allows us to generally do away with (most) icons and still maintains the integrity of realistic air combat and the apparent "speed" of the game.

Before everyone cries "Can't be done" remember this: That's the mindset that put AW where it is today.

Now, with respect to keeping the damage map the present size while _slightly_ increasing plane size:

If the bullet misses the damage map simply show no hit sprite at all. It will appear as a miss. We ALL miss..no one shoots much over 15% that I've seen.

After all, if you drill a wingtip, you've made a hole but you really haven't damaged the aircraft to any large degree, especially with an MG round. A cannon round that doesn't detonate (and it very well might not) just makes a larger hole. Shoot, I have a buddy that flies his T-6 without the wingtips attached so it will fit into a T-hangar.

If these plane sizes are "good enough" then lets totally remove all the icons right now, eh? After all, if we're already getting sufficient realistic visual cues, we don't need them at all, right?

I doubt anyone will go for that!

Being able to determine which way an aircraft is headed from 1.5K max is, essentially, pathetic performance.

Inflight, at 20K, you can EASILY tell which way a DC-9 is headed because you can see the vertical stablizer at 5 MILES. That would be around 9K. Bit of a gap between RL and what we have, I think.

Now, we're all clamoring for REALISM! REALISM! and badgering Pyro because one airplane appears to be 3 knots below published max speed. Why do we so blissfully ignore the astonishing LACK of realism in the graphical depiction of the aircraft? In air combat, seeing the enemy is THE key. Yet will gladly settle for a pale imitation of realism in the visual department.

Once again, what I'm driving at is this:

We've come a long, long way since the 386/40 chip with a 1 Meg video card. Yet we are still using the same lame aircraft "icon id" system that we used 10 years ago. It wasn't realistic then and it isn't realistic now.

Isn't it time for some fresh thinking and experimentation?