RQ-11B Raven for Arma3

[brad7 4]

Looks great, looking forward to this!

[Feint 137]

If the point of breaking lock-on is due to a broken line-of-sight, maybe you could use this every few seconds to see if you are able to see the unit: http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/lineIntersects

Also, I'm not well educated in how it works, but wouldn't the lock transfer onto the vehicle if a unit were to get in one, rather than just dropping?

Yeah, that was my plan to use lineIntersects between the Raven and whatever is locked on. I figure if the line is broken for more than 3 seconds, then I'll drop the lock.

Regarding dropping the lock when a ground unit gets into a vehicle, yeah, I thought of that last night. It would be just as easy to just lock onto the vehicle a unit enters. But going the other way, if a unit exits a vehicle, I'd stay locked on the vehicle because the Raven wouldn't know who to track if more than one person left a vehicle. Not sure how target lock-on works in Apache's and stuff when tracking units. Maybe they can only track vehicles and buildings and positions on the ground but not units. I'm sure YouTube has several thousand videos to help me figure this out.

[delta99 34]

Looking solid. I up voted the ticket but so far doesn't even look like BIS has looked at it. Where is the love!!!

[brad7 4]

Will it be select able through the action menu to see the drone or could we use a vehicle?

[Feint 137]

Will it be select able through the action menu to see the drone or could we use a vehicle?

To see the drone in the camera view? Negative.

QUICK UPDATE: Added the ability to change the size of the compass in camera view by using C or Shift + C. Still trying to see if I can find a workaround for a few problems. Hope to release this soon.

[marker 1]

Feint

Idea popped into my head, no idea if feasible. No idea if it is even used IRL at all..

Would it be possible to have one unit fly the UAV and have a separate unit control the camera?

[brad7 4]

To see the drone in the camera view? Negative.

QUICK UPDATE: Added the ability to change the size of the compass in camera view by using C or Shift + C. Still trying to see if I can find a workaround for a few problems. Hope to release this soon.

Okay will it stay in the air when we aren't in camera view?

[nmdanny 22]

Any news about this mod?

[Colonel_Moustache 1]

that's the best thing I ever see for Arma3 !!! Wow excellent job!

[germanfragger 1]

Well the laser Seems a bit to Strongly visible, and are u able to carry the Station in hand and watch drone cam (instead of holding your main weapon)!

[germanfragger 1]

well the Reavealed now that u habe a sort of Quadcopter as a Personal carried UAV hope u don´t trash the mod because of that!

[frankfranconi 24]

Yeah, keep it up, I'm sure people would enjoy it!

[p_siddy 58]

well the Reavealed now that u habe a sort of Quadcopter as a Personal carried UAV hope u don´t trash the mod because of that!

I hope not as I prefer the look of this UAV. I like to play tactically and when I make missions (im not very good to be honest) but I always make them so that if you don't recce the area before assaulting... your'll most likely get stung. UAVs, especially this one when released, will be used in almost all my missions.

Keep up the good work!

[DJankovic 401]

I don't think players will chose quad copter over raven...because personally i wont i think quad copter is too big to be recon UAV...and to loud...and if u used raven in arma 2 you know what i am talking about...when u launch it i am having trouble when order to return to ground when i try to find it i have trouble to see it..LOL but quad copter is nice looking but it should be smaller i think...A lot smaller...

[=kct=blackmamba 44]

question to feint,

is it possible to make the rq11's remote control animate like if it where binoculars or a laser designator ?

[L3TUC3 32]

Hey Feint,

Just posting to let you know that this thing is frankly amazing, both in concept and execution. I really really (really) love your proof of concept as it doesn't appear to have the problems the BIS uavs currently have. It looks like a vastly superior recon and surveillance option compared to the darter and the greyhawk that lack the locking option and stabilized camera.

Excellent work.

[merc591 10]

HOLY SHIT that uav is amazing its better than the one bohemia gave us with buggy flight models when it flies autonomously and you try to change hte altitude :P XD nice work keep it up

[Feint 137]

Sorry for the delay everyone. I've been working on this pretty heavily for the last two weeks and have gotten this to a pretty good point. The laser is a problem. I had it working at a point where it seems OK to me. But BIS changed the way drawn 3D LINES display at night. Now it no longer appears to glow in the dark, it just receives ambient light. Ugh. It's still a good feature in the day and twilight though.

I found and fixed a bunch of other problems including the assembly problem. The assembly process worked flawlessly in Arma2. But in Arma3, not so much. I think they've just changed the way createVehicle works a little (made collisions more strict) and there are a few bugs like attachTo and setDir not working correctly together which is what was throwing things off. I submitted a ticket. I figured out a few workarounds after a few hours of relentless fix and test cycles. The assembly process was such a fun feature, I didn't want to drop it for Arma3. Took me days of trying to fix it. Tonight I laboriously recoded the whole thing from scratch to see if I could figure out the problem. Turns out, repeating setDir and attachTo two times helps a lot.

Anyway, pretty close to releasing version 2.0... Here's a short update video showing the assembly:

---------- Post added at 14:07 ---------- Previous post was at 13:54 ----------

Feint

Idea popped into my head, no idea if feasible. No idea if it is even used IRL at all..

Would it be possible to have one unit fly the UAV and have a separate unit control the camera?

With the addon I'm working on, the two controls are linked. The idea came to me with the way the real Raven flies around and was an inspiration on their part (Aerovironment). Basically you set a point on the ground that you want to look at and the UAV flies around it. So basically, controlling the flight is done automatically. You just control what you want to look at.

Okay will it stay in the air when we aren't in camera view?

Yes

Any news about this mod?

It's still a WIP. When Arma3 released their own UAVs, I thought the quadcopter was better than what I was working on. But others still seem interested in this, so I've started back up working on it.

that's the best thing I ever see for Arma3 !!! Wow excellent job!

Thanks. I like your username.

Well the laser Seems a bit to Strongly visible, and are u able to carry the Station in hand and watch drone cam (instead of holding your main weapon)!

Negative. I tried a few times to get render to texture to work, but I think I'm doing it wrong. That feature is on hold.

well the Reavealed now that u habe a sort of Quadcopter as a Personal carried UAV hope u don´t trash the mod because of that!

I did set it aside, but now I'm back.

Yeah, keep it up, I'm sure people would enjoy it!

Thanks. Hope so.

I hope not as I prefer the look of this UAV. I like to play tactically and when I make missions (im not very good to be honest) but I always make them so that if you don't recce the area before assaulting... your'll most likely get stung. UAVs, especially this one when released, will be used in almost all my missions.

Keep up the good work!

Thanks for the encouragement! I actually like the quadcopter in the game, but I wish that it worked better at higher altitudes. At regular cruising altitude it works pretty well, I guess. I'd do a few things a little differently, but BIS is approaching the problem in a completely different way that I am (they are using invisible units in tiny helicopters and relying on AI, I am doing tricks and stuff and using a bird masquerading as a plane being controlled by camera commands which seem to work for now for some reason).

I don't think players will chose quad copter over raven...because personally i wont i think quad copter is too big to be recon UAV...and to loud...and if u used raven in arma 2 you know what i am talking about...when u launch it i am having trouble when order to return to ground when i try to find it i have trouble to see it..LOL but quad copter is nice looking but it should be smaller i think...A lot smaller...

One nice thing that the quad copter can do is "perch". I.e. you can fly it somewhere, land on top of a building, set up the camera to look at an intersection or something and then just wait for the people to come by. I envisioned making my own quadcopter that did just that. I still might to get around some of the problems that the stock unit has.

question to feint,

is it possible to make the rq11's remote control animate like if it where binoculars or a laser designator ?

Hey Feint,

Just posting to let you know that this thing is frankly amazing, both in concept and execution. I really really (really) love your proof of concept as it doesn't appear to have the problems the BIS uavs currently have. It looks like a vastly superior recon and surveillance option compared to the darter and the greyhawk that lack the locking option and stabilized camera.

Excellent work.

Thanks very much! I appreciate the feedback and encouragement.

HOLY SHIT that uav is amazing its better than the one bohemia gave us with buggy flight models when it flies autonomously and you try to change the altitude :P XD nice work keep it up

Thanks! I hope to have something to release soon. I tend to make a lot of progress and then get stuck by the real world when I only have one or two things left to do. Then I make a video and find two or three things that are broken (like setPos vs. setPosATL causing problems that I thought were fixed because of misleading language in the wiki). Now I have to put my snow tires on. LOL. But hopefully I can fix the remaining few problems and release this bird to the world.

[warlord554 2065]

Man you continue to amaze with your excellent addons!! Will the mini cam still be displayed even when you pick up the controller? (ex minicam displayed the entire mission if I wanted?) And is it going to be possible to "add" the raven to any backpack so that you can still carry a couple charges and ammo if needed also? Thanks for the great work

[Feint 137]

Man you continue to amaze with your excellent addons!! Will the mini cam still be displayed even when you pick up the controller? (ex minicam displayed the entire mission if I wanted?) And is it going to be possible to "add" the raven to any backpack so that you can still carry a couple charges and ammo if needed also? Thanks for the great work

Thanks! The minicam stays on as long as you want it to, as long as the Raven is still flying. It turns off automatically when you go into the main camera view and when the Raven lands. The raven parts aren't able to be put into a backpack. The backpack they are "stored" in is required for the addon to work. I have thought of doing it the way you suggested, but it will delay things by a lot because I have to figure out how to bind the Raven to the GCS. I think I could probably just do it with "nearestObject" or whatever. And maybe I could sync the codes to the objects in their initial inits. But it's going to take me some mental tricks. Plus, I don't know how well variables can be applied to "items" vs regular objects. So for now, no. The UAV person has to depend on their vest, clothes and teammates for carrying other ammo and stuff.

[armyinf 33]

The UAV person has to depend on their vest, clothes and teammates for carrying other ammo and stuff.

Silly way, but put the Raven backpack into another backpack. Its what I currently do for the Quadcopter backpack.... Eats stamina, but able to put some extra ammo and such in back pack.

Edit----------------------

On arma 2, the server would crash if more than one RQ11 was in the air, has this been fixed?

[p_siddy 58]

Glad you didn't drop this. Can't wait to play around with this.

[kremator 1064]

Nice work Feint ... looking sweeeeeet!

[timmo1982 10]

The camera is moving independent of the UAV, yes. Right now, it's basically looking at a point on the ground. And to move the camera, I'm moving the point one meter in whatever direction you choose. Smooth? When zoomed in, it's jumpy. But when zoomed out, it looks smoother as an illusion of distance because a 1 meter change looks small when you are 100 meters away from whatever is moving. When the end point is locked to a target, it's super smooth because it's actually attached to that target using attachTo. Does that make sense? I could theoretically make it smoother by moving the end point with setVelocity instead of setPosASL and setPosATL, but...I never thought of doing that until I just wrote it just now. There would be lots of problems doing it that way though because the keystrokes would add up if someone holds down the key and yadda yadda yadda I'm using setPos. :)

Just a thought- In order to give achieve both smoothness and get rid of jumpiness, could you make the distance the camera moves a function of the zoom level? I.e. zoomed out, the camera moves 10m a time, zoomed in it moves 1m a time?

[jsmuk 13]

Thanks! The minicam stays on as long as you want it to, as long as the Raven is still flying. It turns off automatically when you go into the main camera view and when the Raven lands.

Does this mean that you can enable the minicam and then someone else can control it from the GCS while you are still able to watch? Or do you still need the GCS to see the minicam?

I ask because with the default UAVs and cTab its quite nice to give someone else the ability to quickly take a look at the camera feed without being in control of the UAV.