PhysX Discussion (dev branch)

[progamer 14]

If this thread is in the wrong place, please move it to the correct location.

As some of you may know, having player walk, drive, land and take off of moving ships (operated by AI or other players) at the moment have a few issues. The point of this thread is to locate of the issues so that they can be fixed. While this may not affect the vanilla game, modding will be greatly helped by this. You can add valuable information to this ticket here for the man class: http://feedback.arma3.com/view.php?id=15384, this ticket here for vehicle classes: http://feedback.arma3.com/view.php?id=15495 and this ticket for fixed wing aircraft: http://feedback.arma3.com/view.php?id=15540. Please use this thread to discuss these issues and possibly find out how they can be resolved.

Edited October 19, 2013 by ProGamer

[Koukotsu 2]

Honestly... off the top of my head I can't recall a single game that actually pulls off the act of walking/driving on a moving vehicle in a feasible manner.

Maybe I just haven't played enough games though. :confused_o:

[Polygon 11]

How about a PVP driveby-only gamemode with this feature in A3? Could be hell of a fun.

[[aps]gnat 28]

Well, VBS does it ............

[NeoArmageddon 957]

Honestly... off the top of my head I can't recall a single game that actually pulls off the act of walking/driving on a moving vehicle in a feasible manner.

Joint Operations from 2004 had this feature. You could walk and drive any moveable vehicle including hovercrafts (for vehicle transport) and Chinook/Mi-26.

[Maio 293]

We have physX enabled vehicles now, so we just need a big enough vehicle with a big enough flatbed surface to test this.

As for the man class, I don't think it uses physx for movement, only for death animations? When you are in a vehicle, aren't you actually latched to memory point and forced into a animation? There is no interaction between you and the surface beneath you. Even when you are on a moving vehicle/surface (the ground, a roof,etc) you are just playing a pre-baked animation.

Edited October 14, 2013 by Maio

[progamer 14]

You can see here that it is infact possible to have animations interact with moving objects. Problem is this is not bouncing the waves or turning side to side.

Edited October 14, 2013 by ProGamer

[papanowel 120]

We have physX enabled vehicles now, so we just need a big enough vehicle with a big enough flatbed surface to test this.

That's why we need the C192 aka C130 in A3 :)

It's awesome to walk freely inside the USMC C 130 in VBS 2 and then jump out from it.

[Maio 293]

You can see here that it is infact possible:

Ok then...

[Hatchet_AS 201]

Still need another day or two (RL business is busy), but I intend to pitch about as proper a fit as I can on the subject matter. Just need to tweak a couple working examples, and reverify quickly what I think I know.

Certainly things have improved in some areas in ArmA 3. Unfortunately while I'm somewhat capable of fumbling around and making things do stuff, I lack in the deeper knowledge of technical things. Which makes articulating my woes somewhat more challenging. Nonetheless, this really needs to be addressed. I see it as preventing us from reaching the next level of 'epic' on many fronts.

*edit*

The video link is nice. But as one of the comments says, issues are with large vehicles. Like the VLCC I'm working on, 300m long, 50m wide. The semisubmersible is 100m square'ish. I'd be interested in seeing that model and config though.

*edit deuce*

Missed two posts.. think you are correct though maionaze. Is what I've gathered at least from fumbling around. Which really makes me think this ends in, sorry guys just not possible (under this RV, or combination of systems within). That confirmation would suffice though. Saves me headache and time, which is always appreciated.

Edited October 14, 2013 by Hatchet_AS

[Bee8190 10]

This would be fantastic feature to have. As I am no programmer I've no clue how this can be achieved but I if I recall BF2 from 2005? gave the players the ability to step onto and walk seamlessly on any object in game.

But by the looks of it walking on moving objects wasn't spot on either. Still though, was better than nothing

[Smurf 12]

It didn't work very well on BF2, most times you would end slipping or TK'ed by the pilot of whatever you were on top of.

EDIT: And the BF2142, never played it, but you didn't had a mode where you had to get into a flying giant ship or something? That had some problems too for what I heard.

The simple presence of that HEMMT with a trailer point makes me believe that they will, eventually, add some functionality to that. Would be dumb to have this option with PhysX and don't use it.

Edited October 14, 2013 by Smurf

[Sniperwolf572 758]

But by the looks of it walking on moving objects wasn't spot on either. Still though, was better than nothing

Having tried it, it was/is useless. It's on a worse level of "better than nothing" than Arma 3 currently is.

All the movement you see in that video is either due to plane moving and players "slipping", players trying to stay with the plane by running in the same direction it's flying or the clipping through the plane.

[progamer 14]

Still need another day or two (RL business is busy), but I intend to pitch about as proper a fit as I can on the subject matter. Just need to tweak a couple working examples, and reverify quickly what I think I know.

Certainly things have improved in some areas in ArmA 3. Unfortunately while I'm somewhat capable of fumbling around and making things do stuff, I lack in the deeper knowledge of technical things. Which makes articulating my woes somewhat more challenging. Nonetheless, this really needs to be addressed. I see it as preventing us from reaching the next level of 'epic' on many fronts.

*edit*

The video link is nice. But as one of the comments says, issues are with large vehicles. Like the VLCC I'm working on, 300m long, 50m wide. The semisubmersible is 100m square'ish. I'd be interested in seeing that model and config though.

*edit deuce*

Missed two posts.. think you are correct though maionaze. Is what I've gathered at least from fumbling around. Which really makes me think this ends in, sorry guys just not possible (under this RV, or combination of systems within). That confirmation would suffice though. Saves me headache and time, which is always appreciated.

Not possible? The man class has too many issues to work at the moment but check the video for proof of concept. We still need to figure out exactly why the man class has these issues and how the developers or modders could fix them. The ship used in the video can be found here: http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?158772-Big-PHYSx-compatible-ship-LCS-2-technological-demonstrator

---------- Post added at 17:41 ---------- Previous post was at 17:36 ----------

Having tried it, it was/is useless. It's on a worse level of "better than nothing" than Arma 3 currently is.

All the movement you see in that video is either due to plane moving and players "slipping", players trying to stay with the plane by running in the same direction it's flying or the clipping through the plane.

Crysis 3 appeared to solve this issue. You could ride on a static ship flying around maps and you could ride on top of a player driven mech.

Edited October 14, 2013 by ProGamer

[Hatchet_AS 201]

Not possible? The man class has too many issues to work at the moment but check the video for proof of concept.[/url]

I was referring to the man class issues and whether or not fixing it is possible. I'm very aware of the 'vehicle' on vehicle stuff working far better than anything previously. Although still a little quirky as seen in that video. Which is the same thing I've experienced on the MkV and VLCC. Driving CRRC's up on the back deck of the MkV is fairly realistic right now. Right up until you want to get out of the CRRC. Which is where the man class stuff starts.

And again, I'm somewhat limited in knowledge ... but it seems as maionaze mentioned, that the man class vehicles do not share the same physx characteristics. Or perhaps are not even part of the physx simulation on the movement side of things? My thought is if it is not part of the physx simulation, that would likely be a big todo on the dev side. And thus not something we'd be likely to see anytime soon, if ever.

I'm hopeful that I'm just misguided with my thoughts, and this ends with BIS being able to reconfigure some things and it work properly for the man class. Certainly appears that vehicle on vehicle collision stuff can be tweaked to an acceptable point, as it is mostly working now.

[[evo] dan 79]

I do hope something good comes out of this, got a small ship I am learning to model on myself I would like to see in the game with this functionality.

[progamer 14]

Has anyone worked on this with the submarine class? Like having moving vehicles in a submerged vehicle?

[[aps]gnat 28]

Has anyone worked on this with the submarine class? Like having moving vehicles in a submerged vehicle?

Huh?! Sounds like you're off on a Sci-Fi tangent there.

Interestingly I did observe at one stage that water was excluded from compartments of APC's driven into the water, but not for my submarine class (early tests) .....

[Hatchet_AS 201]

Has anyone worked on this with the submarine class? Like having moving vehicles in a submerged vehicle?

Haven't had time to play with the sub class yet. Was honestly just waiting to see if Gnat comes up with something sooner or later. I'm patient like that.

Unfortunately the config value to prevent water from entering the hull of my computer was missing earlier this evening. And true to form, water inside the hull is still a fail scenario. Good news is, it looks like I'm just down a PSU. Hopefully back up tomorrow ... was in the middle of configuring a stripped down tanker for testing when chaos struck. :j:

[CaptainAzimuth 714]

Surely if the possibilities of having player and man classes on player/AI driven objects in water, on land, and in air, than it is possible to implement it into Arma 3. With time, and patients, it should come sooner or later.

[barakokula31 10]

patients

Why did I laugh so much at this?

[JamesSaga 1]

This would be a great feature to have in the game but to have it properly implemented in the game rather than hacked in, would "most likely" be a huge amount of work for BIS to make it to a standard they are happy with.

Does anyone know how it was implemented/done in VBS.

[CaptainAzimuth 714]

Patience*

Thank you ADUILO.

[progamer 14]

This would be a great feature to have in the game but to have it properly implemented in the game rather than hacked in, would "most likely" be a huge amount of work for BIS to make it to a standard they are happy with.

Does anyone know how it was implemented/done in VBS.

This is about making it possible for modding, not for the vanilla game.

[CaptainAzimuth 714]

And i do believe VBS is a developers inside project, and no open to the public, as far as i've heard, but if someone were to get the secrets of how they pull it off, and maybe fool around with it in the A3 Engine, simply for research and results for further improvement... That would be something of a miracle.