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The "Interesting Questions about the Game" thread, according to Instagoat

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@Maruk

Thank You very much for Your answer. It explains everything I wanted to know. Much appreciated, Sir!

Sam

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E3 marches ever closer and, in preparation, we've been boning up on our environment and terrain info.

Below is another bite-sized selection of three answers - this time more specifically about the environment - all ready for digesting and, inevitably,

.

Looking forward to the blog post!

As for the full blog post, we'll try to post it at the start of next week, depending on a number of E3-based constraints!

Best,

RiE

How large will the environment be?

  • Seattle is ~3800 km. sq.
  • South Asia ~15000 km. sq.
  • There's also a much smaller map included, which is useful for quickly testing out some ideas in the editor.

How detailed will the environment be?

  • In urban terms, we've got 3D models of a variety of structures: industrial, residential, commercial - all of varying size and at different levels of detail from different heights. In the natural environment, we've got detailed trees and ground clutter, and a brand new weather simulation. Currently, you can only see one of the tree variants in our videos, but we're hard at work creating more, and working on ways to efficiently integrate them in-game, while still running a smooth frame rate.
  • Overall, while - by nature - it will be less detailed than, say, Arma 2, we feel they come together to give a really great feeling of immersion - even when you step out of the helicopter.
  • Of course, these are all very nice words, but for those looking for some harder data, our terrain resolution is 15m between vertices in Seattle, with a 1m/px satellite texture resolution. That compares well to Chernarus, which also offered 1m per px; although, featured 7.5m/vert. When we take into account the brand new support of normal mapping, we think that the visual impact is probably even better than Chernarus from a helicopter-eye-view.

Will there be an advanced weather simulation? (Up and Downdrafts, Shear winds, Building aerodynamics, cloud formation and precipitation, dynamic weather in general?)

  • Clouds are now volumetric and will come in many more variants than we've seen in BI titles before.
  • These aren't just eye candy, though; flying in clouds will cause turbulence, which we're in the process of implementing and tweaking.
  • Wind is also overhauled, and also has a direct impact on the flight model, which you'll notice, for example, when landing into the wind.

Edited by RoyaltyinExile
No, not really sure why I added the links. But boning up did make me snigger rather childishly.

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I'm really looking forward to blog post and thanks for very interesting info.

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Yeah i cant wait to see some gameplay stuff from the E3, i really wonder how it will all fit together.

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  • Clouds are now volumetric and will come in many more variants than we've seen in BI titles before.
  • These aren't just eye candy, though; flying in clouds will cause turbulence, which we're in the process of implementing and tweaking.
  • Wind is also overhauled, and also has a direct impact on the flight model, which you'll notice, for example, when landing into the wind.

Really fascinating stuff! And very exciting too.

Just my two cents from the hardcore realism side of the house: It would be very nice to see some realistic behavior in windy environments as this has a very significant effect on helicopter behavior. Wind is essentially airspeed. The helicopter knows nothing of ground speed, only how fast the rotor system is moving through relative wind. This wind generates more lift because it is forcing more air through the rotor disk, so the helicopter will want to float, less power will be required to hover. Another effect is on the tail rotor. Wind can have significant negative effects on tail rotor behavior. As the tail rotor is already doing a very difficult job, working through the downwash of the main rotors, and trying to handle all that torque, the addition of a quartering crosswind from the left front(on counterclockwise turning rotorsystems) can push the vortices from the main rotor into the tailrotor and foul up the air flowing through it, causing a loss of tailrotor effectiveness or LTE. Also, a left hovering pedal turn requires more power because the tailrotor is pushing harder against the torque forces, and when the helicopter is pedal turned to the left into a crosswind from the left, the tail rotor may reach it's limit if the wind is strong enough, and even with full pedal deflection, the pilot may not be able to continue the turn. When the tail is forced into the wind the helicopter will want to weathervane and whip around. A quick adjustment of pedals must be used to counter this. Adversely, in a right hand pedal turn, if the helicopter whips around, the lack of effectiveness of the left pedal (as outlined above) used to catch this weathervane to the right may cause the helicopter to spin uncontrollably to the right, another form of LTE.

Just some stuff to think about. :D

Edited by nightsta1ker

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I think this quote from above needed some explaining.. here goes.

"This wind generates more lift because it is forcing more air through the rotor disk, so the helicopter will want to float, less power will be required to hover."

At wind speeds of 12 - 24 knots in a hover the wind flowing over the front of the disc to the back of the disc causes "transverse flow effect" which is a vibration. The front of the disc wants to lift and the back doesnt have the same lift based on different angles of attack of the blades(front and back sides). Since the front and back portions of the disc cannot flap and equalize the lift it vibrates the helicopter.

Also wind flowing over the disc in forward flight causes a lifting action on the advancing blade side and somewhat of a stall on the retreating blade side. This effect only starts to be apparent when the copter reaches VNE. Velocity NOT EXCEED (and the helicopter rolls to the retreating blade side and noses up and flips upside down and you crash if you dont recover before this happens.. )

Remeber that AOA or Angle of Attack is from the relative wind to the cord line. The relative wind changes depending on what you are doing in flight.

ok back to the "more and less collective" power in a hover explanation:

The reduced collective power in a "in ground effect" hover has more to do with the angle change of relative wind (more AOA with less collective use) then the breeze passing over the main rotors from a wind as explained above.

Also the increased collective power needed in an "out of ground effect" hover has to do more with a high angle of relative wind(to clarify NOT high Angle of Attack) which reduces the angle of attack. (remeber from the cord line to the relative wind constitutes AOA)

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Jay Crowe answered on Take On Community FAQs.

Thanks, it's going better and better :thumbsup:.

I still miss some answers :).

New Q: I'm wonder if there will be even included/keep combat mod from Arma 2?

Edited by BoboCZ

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Dear BiS thank You for being AWESOME!

After reading FAQ I got to respect BiS even more. TOH is looking so much better than I expected. They even quoted my question answering it lenghtly. A BIG THANK YOU BIS!

Sam

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It's good to know the ground won't be just something with a cheap texture and some goofy trees that would be poor even for games 10 years ago.

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I still wonder if there will be civvies walking around like in Simcopter, nothing like ArmA2's ALICE ofcourse, but more like GTA.

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I still wonder if there will be civvies walking around like in Simcopter, nothing like ArmA2's ALICE ofcourse, but more like GTA.

I can imagine that civilians will be like in GTA, without simulation and network compatibility. You see civilians then tourn round and they are gone, or changed, why not, if it is more cpu freindly.

Will there be civilian ground traffic? (Editor Module based?)

Ambient traffic is planned and is currently WIP.

Aside from ambient traffic (which is not as fully simulated), we also allow the placement of ground, water and air vehicles to add to the experience where needed.

Same with trafic. What does exactly mean that is not fully simulated?

This mean trafic will be only decoration like, something like in FSX?

We will see, still many things are WIP.

Edited by BoboCZ

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Looking forward to E3 gameplay vids by the community fanboys and journalists. :)

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So many exciting news, it's awesome :bounce3:

A little side note on the free flight mode and its challenges

Will it be something along the lines of GTA ? I mean finding the hidden packages and stuff like that or just random rescue/cargo/taxi/... mission ?

IIRC in simcopter you could set some sliders accordingly to what type of mission you prefer. So you were allowed to have 20% of transport mission, 20% of police mission and 60% of rescue mission or just 100% of one of them.

It would be nice if those missions could be toggled on and off.

(...)taking them on(...)
(...)you'll be able to take on(...)
(...)you'll be taking on(...)

:D

EDIT : Oh and...thanks a lot BIS !

Edited by Macadam Cow

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Very exciting! eager to see how the helicopter components degrade if you don't give them any maintenance so many nice effects from the elements..hope there is some E3 footage demonstrating some things :D

Edited by NodUnit

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Jay Crowe answered on Take On Community FAQs.

Thanks, it's going better and better :thumbsup:.

I still miss some answers :).

New Q: I'm wonder if there will be even included/keep combat mod from Arma 2?

Squeeeeeee! Rainbow Dash moment! I´m a forum legend now, oh my gosh *freak*

But seriously, thanks a lot BI for answering these. I hope you pay similar attention to the (disproportionally larger) A3 version of this thread. Right now, I and my friends are very much looking forward to all three new games, including this.

Good job, keep it up!

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