vektorboson

@Sanctuary Are you really sure about what you wrote? I ask because PAA- and PAC-files only differ in their file extensions; internally they are exactly the same. Try to simply rename the .paa to .pac and look what happens; if the engine behaves differently on file extension alone, then this is a curious discovery...

Nickname should be enough; there aren't many people that provide their real name.

AFAIR = as far as I remember That's the relevant part of the Readme: As you see, you are allowed to modify the addon and distribute your modification.

It should be enough to read the Readme which is included with the Addon; AFAIR it stated that if someone modifies it, he should not use the same PBO-filename, document what has been modified and give proper credits. So, permission is implicitly given; of course when in doubt, one should ask the creator.

I have added the summer MERDC and olive drab textures for the IP M1; you need to apply them to the Abrams-p3d yourself. Download: http://home.arcor.de/vektorboson/res/m1_extra_textures.7z

No problem, mate. Anyway, I'm going to remove the link tomorrow, so if anyone wants it, you better hurry up!

EDIT: Link removed

And another round of unfinished stuff! The textures on some buildings are inspired by Arma (they are NOT taken from Arma) Download: http://home.arcor.de/vektorboson/res/scf_objects.7z The models and textures are free to use/modify!

I have uploaded my unfinished Abrams, M113 and Chaparral. They lack a config, thus they are not playable out of the box. There's possibly something missing. Download-Link in first post!

Answered with a PM, looking forward to a good game! Hopefully others will have a good reading from our AARs and facepalm regarding our tactical decisions!

Is anyone in here for a PBEM game of winSP:MBT (latest version 4.5)? I'd like to play a game in the late Cold War era, preferably a NATO-country against a Warsaw Pact-country (I'd choose USSR or East Germany for myself). I'll write an AAR (after action report) of this game, and it would be cool to read an AAR from the opponent. Looking forward to any opponent!

The AH-1S and AH-1F are identical: The AH-1S was renamed to AH-1F in the late 80s. So in 1985 AH-1S is the correct designation. EDIT: Somehow Wikipedia says something different...

I think the cockpit is actually good enough, but there are some bugs: - Mohawk is on Blufor and has Blufor-Pilots - the propellers are actually kind of X-ray, you can see through water And one more bug: The link is not published on Project RACS-website, but by guessing correctly one can download it anyway.

Don't know if it was already reported, but the M113 command vehicle has a red cross like the medical M113 on it.

Well, that was my first statement in this thread... That's nice that the game knows about it. If you can get this data out of the engine, that is suitable for radar simulation, then good. I don't see how this can be done (if there is a solution, I'll be happy to know it). I hope I could say something good about BIS "radar", but I can't think of anything. BIS "radar" is omnidirectional: It knows of any contacts in every direction; jets for example need to turn if they want to scan 360° passive: any contact that is on the 'radar', doesn't know about it; thus also no means of simulating passive/semi-active missiles (without a custom simulation) infrared: the "radar" isn't a radar at all, but more something like the IRST on the MiG-29 or Eurofighter; as soon as the engines are off, the target is a white box, and can't be locked by TAB friendly/hostile: it can discriminate friendlies/hostiles/neutrals; but that discrimination depends on the engines running! viewdistance dependence: actual radar is not dependent on 'view distance' (well, if there's really really bad weather) anti-air and surface radar at the same time BIS radar is not only bad from a realism perspective, but also from a gaming perspective, as kju already stated. It's a workaround for shortcomings in other fields.

Sorry, but I don't get your point. Are you now talking about BIS implementing radar themselves, or about the community implementing radar? If BIS keeps the magic infrared radar, then a 'totally separate sim' for radar needs to be made by the community. Either way, it could be done pretty much the way I have outlined; and yes, visibility tests are normally done with raycasting (there is also another way to make an occlusion test: render the scene without the tested object, then render the tested object and count how many pixels were actually drawn).

Raycasting is definitely required, especially for terrain masking. The raycasting is also required for the radar cone, were the ray is just the 'axis' of the cone. What you call target specular, is what I call RCS-value (which should be dependend on direction, external loadout and other things like gear down/open baydoors). Different modders using different values will happen anyway, even if there's a standard made by BIS. As for the Mosquito vs Boeing 747: That wouldn't happen since the Mosquito wouldn't be in the 'radar receivers list' at first. If I have time, I may code a simple radar system example to show how it possibly may look like. (but wasn't something like this already made by Mandoble or Spooner?)

Well, what we really want is some sort of 'realistic' balancing. Right now an attack helicopter is TAB-Shoot-kill-TAB-shoot-kill, which is very badly balanced, even considering an arcade shooter. Most arcade shooters balance this asymmetry by giving those vehicles less armor (kill a tank with few 7.62mm). But making target acquisition and fire controls more authentic would even the field out. I agree with Kegetys on creating a generic, but authentic, simulation of those systems, and modeling their strengths/weaknesses through different parameters. It's pretty acceptable that nobody has the time to learn all unique systems (besides BIS having to implement them...)

Thermal imaging is easier than an extra LOD; it'd be only an extra material setting and an extra texture. That texture would take only little memory, since it doesn't need to be high-res and it only needs one component (intensity), or two (intensity and alpha).

Of course you need to simplify the models, since you wouldn't be able to have a realtime simulation. I'll take radar reflectance of airplanes as an example: You could indeed calculate how the surface of the airplane reflects radar waves (of specific wavelength) and you could also take material reflectance/absorption coefficients into account. But you could also abstract those values into a RCS-matrix which is calculated/set for let's say six directions and thus speed up the calculations. Now the big questions are: - Are there extreme differences between the complex simulation and the simple simulation? - Are those extreme differences probable? - How much computing time does the complex simulation take away? Is the game still playable if the complex simulation is used under 'normal' playing conditions? What I want to say is, that what a physician considers a raw simulation might still be a pretty complex and realistic simulation, but with bigger error bars, and with the possibility to run realtime as opposed to physically correct simulation which runs rather offline.

@S!fkaIaC I think you are thinking too much in physical terms, whereas in games, even simulation games, it's all about faking stuff to look or handle like 'reality'. In games there is no such thing as wavelength simulated; for 'light', games use RGB-triplets instead of a wavelength spectrum. As for IR/thermal imaging, maybe it will be possible to implement them, if it will indeed be possible to write custom shaders. As for Radar: Well, since it's not a 'visual' thing, it's possible to script it. This indeed requires to raycast into the world; for vehicles it's easy to do. You check if the vehicle is in the radar cone, you use an 'abstract' RCS-value (radar cross section) to calculate the reflection 'power' and display the radar return accordingly. If the vehicle in the cone has a ESM-sensor, well, you notify that vehicle/pilot of the radar spike. Also, it's easy to simulate two different radar wavelengths, since it would be just querying if the sensor supports wavelength 1 or wavelength 2. This is mostly very simple vector math and using the right programming structures. As for ground clutter: Well, it isn't much different than the above, though I see performance problems. Also, how to draw that (ground) radar screen?

Well, I'm trying to make a dialog with a picture which is dynamic, that means I have an external program that changes this picture every few seconds. Now I have two problems: 1. When I do this: _pictureCtrl ctrlSetText "path_to_picture.jpg"; It always loads exactly the same picture; this means ArmA caches the image data, and whenever this same path is referenced, ArmA loads the obsolete image from its cache, instead of from the hard drive. 2. Even if ArmA reloaded the image file, ArmA disallows modification of the file. --- Now I can think of one solution: Name the pictures sequentially, like path1.jpg path2.jpg ... The problems I see are: - since ArmA caches the images, this will fill up ArmA's texture cache, and possibly degrade the performance, since ArmA may throw away important texture data faster than without this. - For long running missions, the drive is filled with unnecessary files; so I have to remove them (if it is possible at all, since ArmA disallows modifications to loaded files), So, are there any ideas how I can solve this in the best way?

Nope. I don't know right now how Spooners holomap works, but everything where you can 'set the pixels' would help.

Actually I once modelled a beamer, but I can't find the model anymore. :D But the thing is: If we've got submarines in ArmA, they should have waterfall displays, no? I coded a very simple waterfall display, a work of 5 minutes, but if there is no acceptable solution to this, I guess I have to abandon it.

Yes, I know, but ArmA still caches the image. Also it's no solution to let the player ALT-TAB every few seconds, so I can write to a file. Is there no solution beside sequential file naming?