Monitors?

[DBR_ONIX 0]

I was playing OFP last night with two friends (Over internet).. A Few days ago one of them said it would be good if OFP2 supported "monitors" (Gandalf The White), so things like the OH58 screens would work... I.e in Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 etc, you can see things via a "screen" (Like TV screen etc etc), without it being in line of sight.. Take for example the HL2 opening bit where Alyx teleports to her father's research place, you can see them on the screens, and it's not just prerendered texture..

Anyway.. Sounds inpossible? Hm, proboly is..

But.. I was flying over water in OH58 (I like that heli..), and noticed that the water reflected something that wasn't acctualy on screen... The bottom of the heli..

So... could something similar to DXDLL grab an area, save it to a file (Applying it over screen would be very very hard from what I've read..), setobject texture it to the monitor window.......

It could also be done with CCTV cameras etc..

Must be possible, don't make me find all the "nothing is in possible in OFP"-quotes.....

- Ben

[HuNtA 0]

somebody did use setobject texture at such a speed that it shown a clip at 25fps, but that must have been quite CPU intensive

As for the file saving, unless you become an expert programmer, its gonna be hard

[DBR_ONIX 0]

It doesn't have to be at 25FPS.. The screen on the OH58 isn't exactly perfect quality, and it'll be quite small, so it won't matter if it's not updating 25 times every second..

By my maths, there is around 30890 users on this forum (3089 pages on member list, each with 10 users), maybe one of them will know how to save a screenshot? :P

Yeh, the CoC UA demo mission had a video at the beginning, and used the titleRsc thing to make it look like a video.. I don't remeber it slowing downa 1GHz 256mb RAM pc much more than any normal mission..

- Ben

[ag_smith 0]

Reflective water is relatively simple rendering trick. What you want to do, is not. Support for "camera ports" has to be built in the engine itself and there's no way for us to modify it. OFP is not Half-life 2, sorry.

Edit: As you can see, the reflection in the water is based on the same scene as the "main frame". On contrary, monitor view would require rendering whole new different scene with separate "camera".

[DKM Jaguar 0]

It doesn't have to be at 25FPS.. The screen on the OH58 isn't exactly perfect quality, and it'll be quite small, so it won't matter if it's not updating 25 times every second..

By my maths, there is around 30890 users on this forum (3089 pages on member list, each with 10 users), maybe one of them will know how to save a screenshot? :P

Yeh, the CoC UA demo mission had a video at the beginning, and used the titleRsc thing to make it look like a video.. I don't remeber it slowing downa 1GHz 256mb RAM pc much more than any normal mission..

- Ben

31024

says near the "who's online" bit at the bottom of the index.

[Commando84 0]

i remember a surveilance camera addon i saw sometime ago on www.operationflashpoint.cz page, you could try to search after camera or something in news or addons

[DBR_ONIX 0]

Yeh, but it worked via cutscenes, no remote viewing..

Hmm, the OH58 camera is attached to the heli, and the view is attached to the heli to. So it's not rendering a whole new location... Hmm

- Ben

[Yssabem 0]

In a related note, i thought about applying the water texture to the wingmirrors on the trucks and urals, so that they worked like proper mirrors using DXDLL. Anyone know if this is possible?

Bit of a threadjack, but i thought it was close enough to warrant not opening another thread...

[MrZig 0]

DXDLL only reflects when it is paralell to the sea. IE it can't be vertical.

[Homefry 0]

You could make an addon, have the gunner seat somewhere, say in a room, then have the viewing area of the camera defined somewhere else... so when you view the gunner's view you could see what the camera sees... thats about the only thing I see that could work.

[Yssabem 0]

You could make an addon, have the gunner seat somewhere, say in a room, then have the viewing area of the camera defined somewhere else... so when you view the gunner's view you could see what the camera sees... thats about the only thing I see that could work.

That'd be great for drone aircraft in CTI.

[DBR_ONIX 0]

Erm, that's been done a few times..

The Finnish Defence Forces mod has a UAV drone thing, Operation Frenchpoint has released a small helicopter drone thing..

It's the exact same princable as the CCTV camera, a "cutscene"..

What I'm meaning is to to take the "remove view" thing, and project it to a surface via setobjecttexture..

- Ben

[ Edit : I read somewhere (OFP.info, possibly) about DXDLL, that mirrios are possible, but it would be very hard to work out what direction it's being looked at etc, so very hard to make accurate reflections.. Something along lines of "Even simple things are tricky" was mention, as "all the code see's is the data for thousands of triangles and some DirextX code".. it is possible,just not very easy.. "Nothing is impossible".. sorry, couldn't resist.. :P]

[ag_smith 0]

Yeah, sure.... nothing is impossible, but some limitations won't be broken just because of time it'd take and the performance impact. Ie. DXDLL reflections make my fps go down from 30 to roughly 10-15 fps. I suspect that if the reflection were built-in into OFP engine that'd not be so bad. And that's not gonna happen until OFP2, I suppose.

What you're proposing to do is not possible at all, because:

1. Using setObjectTexture, you can apply only .paa/.pac files that already exist on your harddrive.

2. There's NO screen capture scripting command that'd allow save its result to a file.

3. Even if you try to use external program that will make screenshot a few times per second and then convert it to .paa/.pac, that'll be applied via loop to a "monitor" face in the cockpit - it's gonna lag as hell.

I'm not saying this to discourage you from braking any OFP limitations, but you have to take into account, that sadly there's no good walkaround to some of them.

[pajama 0]

Wow...

What about the winch moniter on the Mi-26

[gandalf the white 0]

that was just a semi-transparent texture, since only one side of the hull was textured you could see right trough it from your point.

when you press V you can see down, but that is a diffrent camera... I believe

[DBR_ONIX 0]

The V-view thing was just a gunner optic, like the M21 sniper scope, the iron sight on M16, the gunner view in the tank etc etc..

- Ben

[Daniel 0]

Why is DXDLL only able to use reflections vertically? Can't a different version be made that relfects vertically?

[DBR_ONIX 0]

Because it's designed to relect stuff in the water.

It's possible to make working mirrors (As said by Kegetys), but it's hard to work out what direction the "mirror" is being viewed from in relation from the angle of the mirror or something.

I think if you apply the BIS water texture to an object (flat thing on ground), DXDLL treats this as water, so you can have relfective floors

- Ben