Arma Reforger Vehicle Viewports

[veles-zv 176]

Hello everyone, I wanted to discuss a Feature that could be implemented by the devs or possibly by the community sometime in the future, when that time comes. As of now tracked vehicles are not currently in game, the closest thing we have is the BTR 70 and that's still a work in progress. The viewports for the BTR currently do not work, Id like to discusses possible options for their implementation. (viewports and periscope are being used interchangeably in this discussion)

As we all know PIP has came a long way in the ARMA series, thankfully scopes resemble that of the Red Orchestra series, which is a huge step up. However PIP is an extremely graphically intensive solution to problem that could be solved in place of it, PIP textures have a true advantage in optical sights, camera screens, mirrors so its not something that can be replaced by other solutions entirely.

 

If you are familiar with Il-2 Sturmovik: Tank Crew. On certain tanks such as the M4 sherman, the view ports operate in a manner that one would expect. However what makes this very interesting to me and hopefully you as well is that the viewports do not use PIP textures nor do they use a “window” for a lack of a better term in which the viewport is just a tunnel that connects to the walls of vehicle interior like what is found in the ARMA 3 tanks interior. It works by using some method that disregarding selective selections of vehicle lod and any crewmember behind the viewport. How I believe this is achieved is that there is a view frustum set behind the viewport glass texture that sets any textures that intersects it to have zero alpha value making it completely transparent. Or its possible it disregards culling meshes that intersect it using a boolean operation however I think that the later is less practical or maybe impossible but I’m no expert on such technical topics.  

 

Il-2 sherman commanders viewport, Notice how the gunners head along with the interior LOD is complete invisible through the viewport texture. 

almost the same view with the commander turned out. 

simple example of how I believe the view faustrum works (only for the commanders seat and his viewports), for the interior lod for the commander.  green projection are the view faustrum visualized 

this would be the external LOD that the commander can see within 1st person view. so the external LOD mesh height would be set lower ( overlapping with the green faustrum in the image  above )than the internal LOD mesh and of course creating external lod visibility can be done like how it has always been done in the arma series.  However Il-2 does not make use of the external lod view through the viewports, so in essence it just makes everything apart of the vehicle invisible and it might not even use a view faustrum to achieve this effect. 

Simplified view of how the viewport texture works. 

I sincerely hope that the devs see this and have a go at this, if they have not already. if not, us modders could make this a possibility if that idea never materializes officially. thank you for reading my post.