Flexman

I was looking at the problem of glass again, reflections for cockpit instruments and improving the canopy and TADS optics. FSX manages to do so much with so little (a small 128x128 DDS) for shiny metal parts, such as chrome props it was time to look at adding cube mapping again. I know this has been added to Leadwerks 2.40 but the corona problem doesn't seem to be fixed yet. Retro-fitting cube-maps to 2.31 is an easy task and the river mesh material was updated (we don't use the single height infinite plane as it doesn't work with real-world topography). As water goes it's not fancy, real-time reflection and surface animation for high-speed machines during the polish end-phase. River surface cube-mapping matches the environment lighting and thus provides a simple and economic effect. There's only one river that runs east-west. Shiny chrome parts and subtle glass reflections should be trivial to add (when I get the alpha component sorted out). Source

First of all, a sincere thanks for the feedback. It's not something to get too hung up about and it's easy to get the idea that we spend hours and hours on making HUDs pretty colours without getting anything else done. Yesterday was pretty intensive in terms of tweaks and adjustments to the HUD but not just in terms of colours. We've added clipping regions (using glScissor() ) so items like the pitch ladder no longer intrude into areas it shouldn't, this declutters and improves overall readability. Also the acceleration cues are no longer available on the CRUISE mode symbology, again reducing clutter. And the biggest headache which I'll come to in detail has been the flight path vector, that little circle with the stokes at 3, 9 and 12 o'clock. It presented a problem I hadn't anticipated. It's also difficult to explain but I'll try and sum it up. The idea is that the FPV is drawn in the the direction you're moving, so if you are moving directly forwards it's in front of you. If you are performing a perfect sideways slip to the left, if you turned your head to look along your left shoulder you would see the marker in front of you. The HMD or HUD represents a 30x40 degree field of view. However, the default field of view for the main 3D view at a resolution of 1024x768 is 90 degrees. The HUDs default scale is 512x512 and would need to map virtual symbols to a 45 degree field of view (512 being half of this example full screen resolution). Now, if you have a much larger screen resolution, say with a super-wide monitor, or tripplehead (worst case) you're horizontal resolution can be around 3840 pixels across, the game FOV might be 120' and therefore to match the 3D world, the HUD symbology has a field of view as little as 16 degrees. That's tiny. The result would have the flight path marker moving the HUD really quickly since it covers a smaller relative area. This would suck if you really needed it. You can't scale the HUD to match the screen resolution as you loose the top and bottom off the screen. Well, answers on a postcard please. Chewing this one over. Source

Well, the simplest way is to use your own co-ordinate system based on percentages. Assign x_scale equal to ScreenWidth() / 100 and y_scale equal to ScreenHeight() / 100 call your DrawImage() and DrawText() functions which pass the co-ordinates as x * x_scale y * y_scale Then layout your images and text using your percentage co-ordinate system. So regardless of resolution your own co-ordinate system need never change. If you need to scale the font then you'll need to make your own bitmap font functions. But that's fun to do. There are other ways you can do this but they are six of one and half a dozen of the other. I use variations of this for various kinds of display that work across resolutions in my project. Mostly I use OpenGL and change the co-ordinate system to have the origin in the centre of the screen, everything is expressed as an offset from that as a percentage.

HUDs often used in simulators adopt a green hue and use an additive or alpha blend. It can be hard to read them in some conditions and this is something I was thinking about so I tried a few experiments, non of which I like fully. First: To improving readability of heads up displays by down-sampling the HUD buffer to a smaller buffer (I called the hud_fx_buffer) with a texture filter, a poor-mans blur. Using the resulting 'fuzzy' version to reduce the intensity level of the background image. Has potential, reduce the resolution of the hud_fx_buffer too much and you get a darkend 'strobe' effect around the symbology which is akin to what you see on video tapes. It think with a Gaussian blur effect and a higher res buffer it might be a winner. Second experiment, the ubiquitous drop-shadow. Yuck. Looks like a drop-shadow. It's the same down-sampled hud buffer with a small offset. It works though, can clearly see the symbology against the lighter parts of the horizon without resorting to 'orange' or black. The hud 'clarity' will remain a user option, off by default. *update* One last toy, a twinkly hud glow. This is actually quite pretty in motion and again reminded me of some old HUD tape footage shot in old Jaguar aircraft. Good for simulating what it's like to have certain eye-conditions. Another one for the cutting-room floor. Finally, below we have hud glow mk2, a more subtle variation which is just a glow applied, mipmaps help soften out the hud image. Source

TrackIR is already supported and highly recommended. Joystick hat and mouse control also works but difficult to do that and fly hands-on.

The HMD of the new MTADS Apache comes with a number of 'virtual' items displayed to the pilot. The currently selected waypoint is made virtual in cruise and tranistion modes, the waypoint position is marked with a flat bottomed diamond with a dot in the centre. See the take-off point (W00) on the image below. Flying with the flight path marker inside this symbol and you should head right to that spot. Waypoint marker Source

Thanks to "GrViper", bit of Russian press coverage courtesy of "Game Navigator". I think I like the intro about raining fire and brimestone? I had to have a Russian friend in Siberia read it out to me over Teamspeak after which he asked, "so you're interested in flight simulation then?" Work update Last night I added the waypoint/navigation system which is rudimentary but has the needed functions for other bits of code to insert them into an aircrafts avionics. It's a linked list with some methods for management and selection. Once the HMD and MFD gets the steering cues for the current waypoint it should make it easier to navigate around our game theater. Also I worked on the flight path vector which is a little confusing since it's 'virtualised' in the helmet sight (adopts real world position regardless of your head rotation), but the artifical horizon is not. How *I* currently made it work (which is slightly different from how it will finish) is a magnitude of vertical speed and horizontal displacement (sideslip) which is how I think it works in a 2D format for MPDs (the little square screens in the cockpit). For the HMD virtualised mode it's a matter of using angular velocities (HeloBodyOmega) to estimate where the nose is going to be in 3D space and add the pilots view position and rotation. Fred put it more simply, offset from nose = angular velocity * coefficient etc. Well the devil is in the detail working out what the etc. is and doing it in the right order. Flight path vector - circled Nav symbology will be done today. I'd like to thank Toshiba for the Qosmio X300, the most ugly laptop ever made but certainly a powerful machine. Source

Spending time working on my laptop here, which now has some reliable memory from Kingston has proved to be a fantastic little work platform for developing with Leadwerks. The FFD or Free flight dynamics physics engine is still a little rough around the edges for putting into Combat-Helo proper so I'm working on a small test platform which hooks into the Leadwerks entity update callback and calls the FFD update. I'm not sure if this is a good method of doing it, FFD is just a flight model and doesn't handle ground collisions. Originally intended for Microsoft Flight Simulator it releases control when the object is on the ground. Which serves me well, switching over to Newton physics at that point. I've been going through correcting some type assignments and now the FFD engine seems to be working except for some unexplained force in one direction so I'll have to go through it with Fred and see if we can't find out what's up with that. Thanks for all the offers and suggestions with regard to my dead motherboard (it truly was gone). Source

It's a fault on the motherboard al-right but odd that it's only directed at SATA HDDs and not SATA DVDs connected. It sees a 'mirror' of the HDD but can't access either and the HD access light will stay on from power up. I was made redundant from my day job six months ago and now funds are so scarce I really can't afford to replace anything anymore. Really frustrating. But someone has kindly offered to help out with a new part so with any luck I might be able to get back to work in a week or so.

Another disaster strikes, PC wont boot at all. Strange thing happens on the BIOS screen, the moment any attempt to detect any drives (and I tried a few different drives that I know were fine), a bright underscore character appears under the circled comma (picture above). So apart from my laptop I'm now without a working PC and no means to fix it atm :/ Source

More flight symbology added today. Raining almost non-stop and my cars wiper motor has failed, so wasn't going anywhere. We added a couple of items that make it possible to do some precise flying. Velocity Vector Acceleration Cue The Velocity Vector is the blob on the stick that originates from the cross in the centre of the HMD. This is a representation of the direction and speed of your aircraft. Think of these as "top down" views with your aircraft in the middle, forwards movement is up, sideslip left and right. It's scaled so that the top of the HMD (below the heading tape) represents 60 knots. This scale changes depending on the mode but for now I'll stick to the TRANS (transition) which is the most used. Floating around the end of the "stick" is a circle, that's the Acceleration Cue which shows your helicopters acceleration. Generally the blob on the stick will steer towards the Acceleration Cue as you manoeuvre the aircraft. Using these cues it's possible to perform some precision flying and arrest unintended movement before it becomes a problem. Learning how to read these will improve slow speed manoeuvres approaches and landings. I also changed the rate of climb indicator to a solid pointer, slip ball is currently being added. And basic waypoints and steering cues will probably be done this weekend. Especially if the weather is still lousy. Source

HMD = Helmet Mounted Display Remember when Virtual Reality was going to be the next big thing? Seems odd having to re-create something virtual in a game that is virtual, the modern Apache has evolved a bit since the late 1990s. Being able to display in the pilots 3D monocle (yes that's a joke) a lot of data to the crew about targets hidden behind objects, terrain contours. These 'virtual' items are matched 1:1 with the crews head movement unlike a lot of the symbology that is static. The first one we're going to look at is the "head-tracker". This is a broken diamond that represent the nose of your aircraft. As you look left you should see the diamond maintain a relative position to the nose of the helicopter. For give my "Novalogic" terrain map. I had a bugger of a time getting the function to match up to the outside world until I worked out I was missing the aspect ratio of the window (the HUD has a scale factor too in case it's too big or small for your resolution). We're ready to add the waypoint indicators and LOAL/LOBL missile constraint boxes. The flight path indicator is another one, that represents the position of the aircraft in (I think) one second? Have to check my notes on that. You might see some alerts on the UFD that shouldn't be there, as always it's not final and I know about them. The cockpit seems slightly offset from the absolute outside world position, now the crew does seem to sit off axis but I'm checking this out. The camera positions are absolute and bang on the X axis zero line of the aircraft and not directly centred on the crew seats. It looks a bit odd otherwise. Looking into that anyway. Source

It's a sentence I pulled out of context from the recent Unity newsletter. It relates to a Mobile Generation Education Project, a project with a $250k giveaway to help students become the mobile innovators of tomorrow. Now, when I was a student, we didn't have mobile phones, or the world wide web. And if we did, we'd have moved onto something else by now. Teachers point out that 60% of the jobs their students end up doing haven't been invented yet. I helped develop Risk Assessment software used by Walmart among others, five years later it's old technology. Everything moves so fast in this information age and it's accelerating. I wonder how much of this social web technology that is perceived to have permanence will be around in ten years or even five. I'm starting to see an effect that could be best described as Dawinism applied to digital data, a process of selection that results in the useful data being retained (at least higher up the search tree) and copied. And this process snowballing with an ever increasing amount of new data. With amazing concepts of collective information gathering such as Seadragon and Photosynth on the horizon, any guesses as to what the future holds in information mining are just that. If you don't know what Photosynth is then check the link and prepare to have your mind blown by possibilities of this and other forms of data. It doesn't take academics to come up with these kinds of ways of looking at data, it takes a creative (and ever so clever) mind. Picasso said everyone is born an artist until it's taught out of them. Right, that killed 10 minutes. I wonder if anyone will be referencing this blog entry when I'm gone from this world. I expect the URLs will have long since died Source

We're using Portals use for walk-in vehicles and tents, interiors have their own world, including "inventory", hand carried objects to get around accuracy problems which layers wouldn't solve at all. Although if a streaming solution can overcome this problem then it wouldn't be necessary.

I noticed it a while back when 2.32 was released. I used a corona for a sun glare effect and in 2.32 and I presume 2.40 still, you can still walk around it, and looks pretty weakly blended. I'm a bit disappointed about that. I've now shelved the upgrade till that gets sorted. Will work on more systems till then.

A red cube? That's like a red square, but in 3D? That's rad. We're all set to develop games for the awesome "Degenatron" system. Check out the amazing games it can play.

Erm, bum. Yes that's a bit of an issue isn't it? Use a lot of those for lights, sky objects etc. I take it those are still not working then?

Been pretty ill this last week, progress has been sporadic. I took time out to rebuild the engine code so it's now the same for all Apaches, AI and player alike. Pilot feedback from screen-shots and videos also allowed me to rebuild the whole engine start-up and ENG display page. Automatically switches to in-flight mode. Things blink, change colour, are boxed appropriately. Couple of bits left to do, the biggest headache was dealing with all the fiddly scale changes and adding new code to simulate power transfer which needs some attention. Here's the page with some values thrown in to show some extremes. The whole thing is worthy of a tutorial video sometime. Still have some parts to add to the engine simulation, oil, temp. Rotor speed and torque needs values from the new flight model to work properly but essentially it's just polling values from the helicopters state. Oh another thing I didn't put back in, the actual transient timers, these are counters that show how long you're flying outside of normal parameters which can shorten component life or lead to failure. The new alert system which I also had to overhaul is ready to drop the betty samples in en-mass. Will tidy this up tomorrow, look at where we are with the new flight model and see about the Leadwerks 2.40 engine upgrade. The PHY situation is not bad as I thought since we're not using LE for vehicle physics. Source

For the record, practical work on the detailed CH-47D interior started yesterday. The CH-47D is a great machine better suited to the environment in which it will operate in Combat-Helo. The Chinook (prn: shin-uk) is a surprisingly nimble and small helicopter, not the large lumbering giant as is often perceived. What you may find surprising (I did anyway) was that it's about the same size as the Apache. See the comparison image below. Apache / Chinook size comparisonIn Afghanistan, the CH-47 usurped the role of the UH-60, having a larger lift capacity, no energy hungry tail boom, armed protection from it's ramp and door gunners as well as a range of countermeasure devices. It's range, power and speed has saved the lives of many Afghan civilians and troops in the region. Additionally, transport helicopters reduce the reliance on vulnerable road convoys and are important in maintaining remote security outposts. The AI CH47 will be included in Combat-Helo. If we hit our sales target we hope to release a flyable CH-47D with detailed cockpit and systems as an addon (or stand-alone version - to be decided), as Combat-Helo Operation Pegasus. This will add the CH47 as an option to fly on medevac, armed escorts, insertions, extractions, transport, search and rescue missions as well as a new variant of the counter insurgency campaign. We feel that this is the better choice, it lets us explore the portalised aircraft technology we started with the Apache which will enable a level of interaction between crew that hasn't been seen in any other PC simulation title to date. Source

Hey it's a blog, I'm blogging. All this talk about fluids.has brought on a nasty head cold. Up at 6am searching for the Lemsip (a horrid lemon flavoured drink with decongestant) and watching "Dogfights" on DVD. The History Channel series "Dogfights" prompted the next three to four hours of viewing since I realised just how bad it really was from the simpleton "Top Trumps" presentations to the seemingly good idea at the time computer graphics. To be fair I did learn something new every episode but given the subject and use of 'state of the art' CGI to tell the tale of classic air-wars why did it come over as really dull? Maybe current affairs news programs are to blame, their overuse of 3D graphics to portray everything from the invasion of Iraq to Tiger Woods getting kicked out of his house for a case of the "not-wife" has dulled the senses to the point where I really don't care about news any-more. It no longer gets read, watched or listened to. My mornings are happier and stress free since I'm no longer aware of what the children are up to in Westminster. The media seem to be outraged for me, it's one less thing to worry about. The downside of forgoing traditional media is a sense of isolation. Feeling I might have been missing out on the recent Battle of Britain events I decide to check out what the BBC have been up to for the 70th anniversary. *pause to drink my Lemsip - yuck* Back again. Horray. The BBC declared war on boredom as the Battle of Britain Weekend has given us a season of themed documentaries, dramas and ...er...entertainments. The first and one I recommend to everyone to catch is a fascinating film based on the book "First Light" by RAF pilot Geoffrey Wellum, at just 18, he was among the youngest pilots who saw combat and subsequently wrote his memoirs which I must read after watching this erm, docu-dramatainment film. It charts the slide into "VoidComp" (no compassion, the first of two Blade Runner references in this blog post), loosing your humanity and identity through combat on a daily basis. http://www.bbc.co.uk/tv/comingup/first-light/ Geoffrey Wellum was also in the BBC's "The Battle of Britain" documentarytainment 1hr 30min special in which Colin and Ewan McGregor try to ... I'm not sure what. Trace the steps of those pilots? Train up for a once in a lifetime joyride at the controls of a Spitfire? Establish the significance of the events of August/September 1940? I'm not clear what it was about but features lovely photography of Duxford and classic aircraft. Colin is like what Ewan would be if he grows up (and I mean that in a good way). The look on Colin McGregor's face after his flight at the controls of the Spit was priceless. And a great 3 point landing with no bouncing down the airfield. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00txy2q Not much more to add, except a plee to all documentary makers. If you're going to raid photo archives for genuine images, is it really necessary to add that off-putting 3D panning effect to EVERY SINGLE BLOODY ONE? You're not making Blade Runner, clearly they weren't using Holographic technology in WWII, photographs only move if you're attending school at Hogwarts, so please lay off the stupid effects, it just looks wrong. There's no replicant hiding behind Winston Churchill, Hugh Dowding or Sir Douglas Bader. I should know, I was just seven years old and in short trousers when I met Douglas Bader, I vaguely knew who he was from my fathers stories. My father was not a pilot, but he was in the RAF doing what he did best, build things, repair planes, make do, valuable skills for the war in North Africa. While posted somewhere in England when Duggie needed some change for the pub phone, my father was there to loan him that sixpence. Which was never returned I should add. Not that this reflected badly on his character, Duggie was often legless in or even out of the pub (as he would be the first to joke). Both have since passed away. But bless the BBC for letting us remember those who have passed on in such a way that celebrates the present. Through the experiences of those before might we learn something about ourselves, if we care to listen. Watching Dogfights you'd be forgiven for thinking that all you needed to be to win was be a great pilot. It's a blinkered armchair general point of view that lacks any basis in reality. In "First Light", Mr Wellum reflects that it didn't matter if you were a good pilot or a great pilot, you just had to be lucky. Never a truer word was said. Source

Time for another dull dev blog. This time, the exciting world of Hydraulics which I didn't know much about except what I can gather from various books I have laying around. Hydraulics are a game component as it effects how long you can maintain control in event of damage to your controls or hydraulic lines and it also powers gun turret control. Controls are not direct in modern aircraft, due to the amount of force required to move a large surface area on an aircraft weighing tons, human muscle has been replaced by a system of wires, pipes, pumps and actuators. Pressure within this system is vital as it translates a pilots control movement into control surface movement, on a helicopter the cyclic (joystick) operates hydraulic servos that move a large ring under the main rotor called the "swashplate". Wikipedia (swashplate) I digress. To simulate damage to this system, we need a basic simulation that isn't too complex as it needs to work for all AI helicopters in our main update loop. If the hydraulic pressure drops then control response has to become "mushy", you should feel this if you're flying a damaged bird. Additionally this should give the AI flying as it's virtual control inputs lag potentially inducing poor looking oscillation. More experience AI crew having faster input response times should be able to handle emergency situations better. From time of loosing pressure, we're going to give you around 20 minutes to land, your mileage will definitely vary. The ACCumulator stores around 3000psi and is a buffer that maintains the pressure of the primary (PRI) and utility (UTIL) system pressure. These two systems, PRI and UTIL are pressurised from the APU and used to start the engines. This is reflected in the ENG page during startup. Start the APU, watch the pressures (there's a bleed metric for damage to the system and a fluid level as a percentage). As soon as the primary system reaches around 3000psi (there's a bit of fluctuation added for authenticity) you're good for engine start. I think this is where the LOCK position of the rotor brake gets it's pressure from. Almost everything in the Apache is automatic here, operation of this system is handled for you with some exceptions. We have a big Emergency Hydraulics button in the cockpit, pictured below. This allows fluid from the accumulator circuit to flow into the utility circuit. After that, you're on your own. The things we have to do just to get three numbers up. Oh, and don't get me started on oil pressure ;-) Source

I wasn't sure about the STOW angles so I set the PNVS to 165 inboard (0=along the nose) and TADS 180' inboard. Activated via the NVS mode switch in the cockpit (or CTRL S). The CPG station doesn't seem to have the noeswheel/NVS panel unless we missed it. You'll just have to play as the pilot if you want to flip the switch by hand. Switch has 3 position, off (stows the sensors for transitional flight), normal for tracking head movement and fixed for boresight (straight ahead). The NVS Mode switch is located forward of the engine power levers, left side panel. Source

Well, I do predict that 2D gaming on 2D monitors will be much bigger than that old 3D glasses stuff. And 2D gaming has got a lot of 'traction' in the industry already.

That's right. No 3D glasses will be required. Full support for the very latest 2D high-resolution monitors will be included, no additional headache inducing hardware will be required. (yes I am loosing my mind) Source

If you get an iMac, avoid blowing money on a matching mouse (the ones with the 4 way scroll nipple), use a decent multi-button Logitec or something you're familiar with. Those Apple mice suck for heavy duty use.