L_NV - Restricted nightvision in ArmA3

[laxemann 1673]

LAxemann presents

L_NV

Restricted nightvision in ArmA3

What's NV about?

In vanilla A3 you can pretty much see as far as you want with night vision devices.

The realitiy, however, looks different and it's fairly hard to see further than a few hundred meters, even with modern ones.

Take a look at this video.

So I decided to do something about it, similiar to the approach that ACE² did back in A2.

I know that you can spot bright lightsources from further away but that unfortunately wasn't possible.

Feedback regarding the view distance is more than welcome, by the way! :)

Also, the ai can still see perfectly fine with night vision goggles. If anyone of you know how we could counter that, contact me - please! :)

Known Issues

• AI can still see perfectly well and the mod therefore is more suitable for TvT missions... at the moment. Contact me if you're familiar with AI stuff!

Where can we download that thing?

Here (Dropbox, V 0.50)

Changelog

0.5 - Initial release

Requirements

CBA

Credits

• BIS for ArmA3

• People like Foxhound that dedicate tons of their spare time to keep the information flow running!

Edited September 28, 2014 by LAxemann

[laxemann 1673]

To make it clear:

It's not "complete" since I'm still looking for...

• ...someone who can help me out with the AI (so that the AI's view is restricted when using NVGs aswell)

• ... feedback regarding the view distance.

Cheers :)

[dht78 10]

Good mod, but i want to say the view distance on night vision mode is ridiculously limited. Yes, i agree that idea that when in night vision, you cant see well at long distance as it is at close range, but it doesnt mean 'you cant see shit with NV at long distance.'

Take a look at these videos:

Thermal Imager vs. Night Vision:

(see last half)

FPV QUADCOPTER + NIGHT VISION:

Edited September 28, 2014 by dht78
To link

[b00ce 160]

To make it clear:

It's not "complete" since I'm still looking for...

• ... feedback regarding the view distance.

Cheers :)

Judging by your video, the view distance is too short. And realistically speaking the prime limiting factor with the view distance is what range the NVG is focused to. A better option would be to set the Depth of Field to a certain range, or even better be able to adjust it. As someone who uses NVGs regularly (ANVIS-6) I can see for miles and miles, but the interior of the aircraft and the area immediately surrounding it are blurry (And if I set the focus inside, the opposite is true). I don't know how feasible this is though.

Some other notes, about NVGs in general in ArmA, are that the field of view is WAY too large to be realistic and I wish so very badly there was an NVG overlay that allowed you to use normal vision around the edges, like DCS.

Took this the other day. The weather was kinda crappy so visibility isn't the greatest. You can see hangar lights that are over a mile away and barely make out the mountain that's 7 miles out.

http://i167.photobucket.com/albums/u125/booce/IMAG00181.jpg

[PivMan 11]

First off LAxemann I just want to say that your modding attitude of making small changes to increase immersion has made my ArmA experience all the much better and I want to thank you for that. I have basically every mod you've released in my load order because there's really little to no reason not to have them.

Regarding the night vision, if I understand correctly you're using fog to fade the image out when NV is equipped and it seems to achieve the desired effect as far as making far objects impossible to see. But watching the video I feel like the distance at which things should be completely unviewable needs to be further out, like two to three hundred meters further out, and that there's a lot more factors at play than just a loss of vision at a set point. At distances leading up to the no-sight threshold it seems like there's more blurring and more prominent light bloom, both of which are factors in vision. Do you have any post-processing experience in modding? I feel like you could achieve a very similar and therefore much more realistic image using some blur and bloom effects coupled with what you have now. These are the results I got from turning my blur and bloom video options up: http://imgur.com/a/p1rlF#1. There's two images in that link in case you're using Hover Zoom or whatever. I'd also recommend seeing if you can make it so equipping NVGs decreases the player's FOV by ten to fifteen or so degrees. It'd give a small zoom effect but I feel like the lost sense of awareness could really add the realistic feel you get when wearing these kinds of devices. An alternative would be decreasing the visible area of the game's current NVG overlay.

I don't know how far you plan on going with this concept but you could really make some worthwhile results if you try to replicate the video's image entirely.

Oh, by the way an overcast level greater than ~80 seems to break the fog functions. I don't know if anything can be done about that.

Edited September 28, 2014 by PivMan

[Guest]

Release frontpaged on the Armaholic homepage.

L_NV - Restricted nightvision v0.5

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We have also "connected" these pages to your account on Armaholic.

This means in the future you will be able to maintain these pages yourself if you wish to do so. Once this new feature is ready we will contact you about it and explain how things work and what options you have.

When you have any questions already feel free to PM or email me!

[laxemann 1673]

Allright,

thanks for the bunch of feedback guys, I'm very grateful for that!

Okay, so after reading through what you wrote I'd first like to point out the main "problem":

I get and know that IRL, the view distance isn't "limited" like that and that you can see places further away aswell if they are well-lit.

Since I'm indeed "just" using the fog which basically means that after a certain range you won't see shit,

simulating the real life thing isn't possible that way. And I unfortunately don't know any other way at the moment.

Buuuut we're sitting in this boat together so let's do this, I'm currently not at home but there are things I'd like you to do and try out.

• If you can think of any other good method and have scripting commands that support your way, tell me!

• For simplicity, I'm using the "standard" setfog command, currently it is 0 setfog 0.66.

I'd like you to quickly drop into the editor, placer yourself at nighttime, use your NVGs and play around with the values (meaning from 0-1, e.g. 0 setfog 0.45)

You can then write into this thread what fog level seems to be acceptable for this purpose.

LAxe out :)

[bad benson 1733]

for the AI you could look into this https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/setSkill_array

spot distance looks like what you need with your approach.

i also kinda agree with the depth pf field/focus thing. i already have an idea how to script that. gonan make a test and report back.

[PivMan 11]

If I recall correctly the author of ASR AI had a means of restricting the AI's vision based on weather conditions. You might want to take a look at his PBOs.

[machineabuse 11]

I like the intent. I think you may have a misconception that one can't see far with an NVG which isn't really the case. It isn't that you can't see objects that are far away, it's more that you would have trouble discriminating what they are. Think of it like seeing a low resolution picture of a distant mountain; You'd still see the mountain in the distance but the trees on it become a mess. With this solution you lose the whole mountain :)

There are a few ballpark figures at the bottom of this page that should give you an idea.

[CaptainObvious 95]

My 2c.

Would it be possible to increase the view distance and add some noise to the picture, this way you'd be able to see stuff at a reasonable distance but you couldn't identify them reliably, that's basically what I experienced during my service; there's something in the horizon but I can't really tell what it is.