Why no rear view mirrors?

[Czpetr]

The rear view mirrors were common on Spitfires and Hurricanes (with some exceptions) and I have heard that some LW planes used it too (saw photo of Bf109E) and US (P47s, P51s and more) so why there are no RVMs in AH? Is it because of too big frame rate drop (how about to make it optional on/off), or is it considered as too big advantage to RVM equiped planes or is it simply forgotten by 3D modeller?
Just curious to know it.

czpetr

[MANDOBLE]

Czpetr, with our actual dead six view you have almost the same effect than with a mirror.

Think also in the performance hit introduced by rear view mirrors needing to render two images at the same time (foward and rearward). You problably would loose 1/3 of your frame rate or even more.

[Czpetr]

Originally posted by MANDOBLE
Czpetr, with our actual dead six view you have almost the same effect than with a mirror.

I should happily trade that unrealistic dead 6 view for RVMs. Thats realistic and historic. Also it should be better if you chase someone to check mirror (visible in forward fiew) than to switch view back and risk to lost con in front of you.

Think also in the performance hit introduced by rear view mirrors needing to render two images at the same time (foward and rearward). You problably would loose 1/3 of your frame rate or even more.

There I am not sure if the performance hit should be so big, the rear view is small and many players have good HW already. If I have 60 fps, I`d happy with 40 as well But who knows...
I was just currious to hear the official reason why there are no RVMs

czpetr

[FirstBorg]

I think that the AH Engine does not support Raytracing, which is necesary for a mirror. Im not sure about it, but I never sah reflections in the game.

[LJK_KämpferAs]

I think that the view that you'd see in game would be too small to make out much. What might be a better idea is to make a button active pop up window somewhat larger that the real life mirror, say 1/8th the screen size, located in the approx area of the real life mirror. This would give you a 'readable' image, and only effect fps performance for the time it was poped up, say 1 or 2 seconds at the most. Or maybe it could be zoomed out of the mirror to 1/8th screen size, as the current map does.....

Just thoughts here.....

[Starbird]

A mirror in the game won't be an actual raytraced mirror. That wouldn't be the best way to go about it in a real time 3d engine.

Most likely the mirrors in AH would be a textured polygon. The polygon will get a new texture every frame, of a view looking behind your aircraft (from wherever the designers pick to have the view shown).

Its the same effect that you see in most FPS games. Either viewscreens on the wall, or the teleporters in quake3 (when you're close enough you see a 'window' showing you whats on the other side).

[BigCrate]

For those who flew Aw3 will know what I'm talking about.

Ok AW3 had RVMs. And when you checked your 6 the view would be the mirror. But it would take up most of the screen. you couldn't see from the front view just the mirror and 4 small corners that showed cockpit frames sky etc. This is how they should model it.. Cause flying a F4U and looking back is kinda ruff on ya. And flying a 38 you got that damn thick bar in the middle of trhe cockpit and the seat back takes up more than half the screen.

Cw
=Twin Engined Devils=

[Karnak]

According to what I have read, Spitfire and Hurricane pilots from the BoB period stated that a 109 opening fire typically had a wing span in the mirror of about this:

_


Now scale that down for a computer screen.

[Gixer]

Rear View Mirrors?

I think if any pilot saw something in his rear view mirror he'd already be dead anyway.



...-Gixer

[Czpetr]

Originally posted by Gixer
Rear View Mirrors?

I think if any pilot saw something in his rear view mirror he'd already be dead anyway.



...-Gixer

Hmm... then for what reason the mirrors were mounted on ACs? Hair dressing?

[Seeker]

Hmm... then for what reason the mirrors were mounted on ACs? Hair dressing?'

On the Mustang? Yes.....

[tofri at work]

I think, its the same problem as with the Arado periskop.
Pyro said already a big not yet to this.

There would be a big hit on the frame rate and the forward view would be not synchron with the rear mirror.

In other (older, boxed) flight sims the rear mirror ate much more performance than any other graphics feature. I always turnd them off.

[Esme]

I don't know about the other issues involved, but one way to make a rear-view mirror practical to use (bear in mind, this may not be practical to implement for programming reasons, for all I know) would be to model it as a convex (fish-eye) mirror. Maybe frame rates could be saved by simply faking the mirror view, or even making it a bit like a cross between the attitude indicator and a tail-warning radar.

What I have in mind there is that land and sky in the mirror would be simply depicted as green and blue respectively, and the mirror woulduse generalised shapes for single engined, twin engined and four-engined planes (3-engined go either as twins or fours, depending on size! :-} ).   ALso have a limited number of aspects for each generalised type shown, one per 45 degrees, say. And yellow flashes if its shooting at you.

Perhaps with those limitations it'd be enough to give you some idea of whats happening behind you, without hitting fps too much, and also without using a mirror that's too oversized?

Esme