In sims the cockpit frame can obscure distant objects.
In real life the pilot can move his head to look around the frame.

While you could add controls to move the pilot's head in three extra dimensions, it could be too complex to do it manually.
But if you place the camera a bit infront of the pivot point then panning the view would automatically result in the camera moving.

The camera and pivotpoint in the same place:
[img]http://www.geocities.com/jeroen_huijben/noparallax.txt[/img]
The camera in front of the pivotpoint:
[img]http://www.geocities.com/jeroen_huijben/parallax.txt[/img]

Could this be implemented in JetThunder?
It can be configured by the user setting the distance between camera and pivotpoint.
0 would be the normal position and the greater the distance the greater the effect.

good post - we have this set up already - we can set its level quite easily and it could be a user setting.

eventually though, we'll have trackIR 6of put in.

what do you think of eye roll?

in real life when you rock your head sideways - your eyes roll along the roll axis to maintain the direction of perceived gravity.

in flightsims, this means at slow speeds - as in hoving especially, when you roll the plane, in real life the aircraft will appear to roll, the horizon stay more steady..

..but in flightsims you never get that - just that they eye behaves like a camera and rocks from side to side without the automatic comensation we have as humans.

I believe when I add in eye roll it makes things seem so damn real - whereas when dante see it its like UGH, thats aweful.

Man oh man, I just can't wait for this sim

Eye roll Yes please, optionable would be best I'm guessing although I have no idea how hard that is to implement.

Keep up the good work people

Dano.

http://fluffysteve.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/rolleyes.avi

i did a quick movie to show eyeroll.

flying slow in the hover the movie starts, i then mess about and we see that our body still feels most of the gravity earthwards, so the plane rolls around stationary eyes that compensate of tilt.

then we build up speed and do a hard turn. And the eyes stay more or less locked with the plane axis since the G force pulled is greater than real gravity.

:rolleyes: <- appropriate smiley

Looks good.
Will it only be an automatic transition as speed builds up or can we also manually switch between cocpit- and horizon-stabilized modes?

at the moment it is automatic - to model how they eye behaves under different g forces- there will be a setting to switch it on and off.

Will the pilot be able to "look into the turn" like in LOMAC..??..or will it be a fixed straight ahead view..??

I like the way it kinda jerks the camera down in high-G turns.

Would adding a degree of transparency to cockpit frames be a simpler way of emulating 'looking around' them?

I remember all the fuss over 'head-bobbing' in Battle of Britain.........

Cheers,
Keith

:)
I don't mind the eye roll while the Harrier is hovering, it's even handy to keep in mind that banking too much in a hover is not a good thing to do.

Problem for me was eye roll at high speeds - as I've said, even in a high speed bike the human mind seems to adjust to the banking turns. But seems you fixed that, good job

Thanks for posting the video, that certainly convinced me! I does look strange initially, but the feeling of motion is excellent

amen, that looks AWESOME!

Jet Thunder Crew,

I work for NaturalPoint and would like to talk to you guys about adding TrackIR 3 with Vector support to Jet Thunder. Which I am pretty excited about! For those that don't know about TrackIR 3 with Vector, it allows View Control in 6DOF. It is already supported in several other current and upcoming sims. I would think that you guys would want it supported as well.

I am the new Marketing and Developer Relations guy and woud love to see 6DOF support in Jet Thunder. Can someone drop me a line so I can contact you more directly.

And good work on the sim guys. It's looking real good.

I can be reached at jason@naturalpoint.com

Regards,
Jason Williams
Marketing Director
NaturalPoint, Inc.

This thread is a perfect example of new features, a hard working development team, and response to the community. Keep it up devs; thank you.

I am very excited to hear about TIR 6DOF.

I am missing a codec to view that video, and would really like to see it. What do I need to download?

Steve,

My reply email to you keeps getting bounced back for some strange reason. Can you check it out? Hmmm...maybe it's something I'm doing wrong.

I get this message.

Your message did not reach some or all of the intended recipients.

Subject: RE: hello
Sent: 1/13/2005 1:32 PM

The following recipient(s) could not be reached:

'Steve *****' on 1/13/2005 1:32 PM
550 5.7.1 <*************.com>... Relaying denied

Jason

that is a strange thing. I emailed myself from other account and it worked.

I have no idea, except maybe our anti-spam filters are over excited? - perhaps you could try my other email address?

steven_dobbs@blueyonder.co.uk

Hey guys,

Ok I found out that it's our server failing to forward on my mail to you because I am currently at a remote location. I'll get in touch with you guys on Monday if it's ok. Sorry about the hassle. Thanks for taking a look though :-)

Jason

I like the eye-roll too. By the way, I noticed a fast sun reflection on the canopy frame in the last part of the movie. Never seen anything like it, nice touch!

Ok, I checked out that video.

I like the eyeroll - keep it. The hovering flight reminded me of a helicopter sim, which I think is a good thing.

Great feature - looking forward to this sim.

If I recall correctly TFX used to have an eye-roll effect in the virtual cockpit - impressive even with the limited graphics back then.

Err .... dont think I have ever noticed eye roll RL including in a fight with rapid G excursions. If its there the brain resolved this very quickly
and decided it was not appropriate viewing material .....

I unfortunately can't get the link to work but I have noticed in the past that when I am banked at all, I always seem to try to roll my head upright.

I noticed it one day when I was flying a low level with a student in the front seat. I thought it was strange as I would have expected his head to remain opposite the G vector which remained at the bottom of the aircraft. But each time we turned, he cocked his head to keep his eyes level. Then I realized, I did it too.

Can't wait for this sim to come out!

Deacon

I notice in the second animation that, while the object is more realily viewed "out in front" of the cockpit, you also see areas of the nose of the aircraft that you're not really going to get from inside the pit.

This is one of those big boondoggles people tend to ask for in sims: to have perfect vision around canopy obstructions, when the solution is simply to just maneuver such that the obstruction isn't there (as simple as a bank of a degree or two, or a little rudder kick), or perhaps wait 1 or 2 seconds until the object moves to a different location. If your Situational Awareness is up to par, you will still be able to accurately predict where that bogie will be in only a few seconds from now. Given the nature of air combat and perpetual motion, the problem solves itself.

Perhaps. This is a simple animation - who's to say the aircraft radome has been modeled to scale?

Well, I think I am making a correct assumption that if the canopy railings are modeled to scale, so is the nose. call me crazy, but I think that was the modeler's intent.

Anyway, I've seen several sims toy with these "head jog" commands, and view customization schemes, only to end up with head-through-the-canopy-glass type viewpoints that are far more unrealistic than just accepting the fact that a cramped cockpit is going to block your view at some point.

People need to get used to the fact that you are likely NOT going to have perfect visual acquisition all the time during any fight. It's one of the challenges of air combat, and it's why you develop SA skills to help you cope with it.

And to ad to Nguyen´s point. If you ever havce the experience of sitting inside a 70´s - 80´s fighter planes cockpit you´ll se how smal they really are. I had teh chance of sitting in a Dagger and a Mirag IIIEA, and man, teh visibility towards the front is really low. The space between the instruments and the glas is very little. I belive that both the Skyhawks and the Harriers have much better visibility, but I don´t belive that is not also quite restricted compared to todays fighters or what we think an apropiate visibility should be.

And even so, the FRS.1 don´t look like they have a woderful visibility.

Then aggain the Pucara has the most open visibility I know of, in a combat plane. Man it almost feels like you are sitting on the nose outside the canopy .

My point is that we don´t need a viewing system that would alod us to move our head. Besides. The pilot can move its head freelly whil no G´s are being pulled. In the middle of combat, the head of the pilot surlly goes along with the aircrafts movements. Just whatch the viedos form any aircraft doing acrobatics and see the pilots head...

On the other hand, our view on the computer monitor would be like the RL pilot flying with one eye covered. Human stereo vision allows us to see past things like the cockpit framework. What's blocked from one eye might still be visible to the other. I'd like to see sim makers take this into account.

i think to compensate for lack of stereo vision, the art people may have narrowed the struts.

i suppose this isnt quite right for those using 3d goggles.

(i want a pair - im really wanting to see what it would be like to see the 3d world beyond the cockpit)

Steve and Thunder-works crew,

I sent a new email. It's working now.

Thanks,
Jason

MBeaver, you got a point there.

I have no problem with that. It worked fine for sims like Longbow 2 and EAW.
Another method would be to make the struts translucent. Better yet, have them solid in the center and become gradually more translucent towards the edges.

translucent struts? i think that would look a bit strange.

I'm not sure but I think EECH has that option. Red Baron 3D and Gunship! have the option of making the whole cockpit translucent.

So long as it's an option... I would prefer to keep them opaque.

Translucence is an excellent solution. It doesn't take much opacity to create a great effect where the bar always looks like it's there, and solid, but you get uninterrtuped views of "obscured" icons, bogies, symbology, whatever when close by frames.

WWIIOnline moves your head and doesn't just rotate your eyeballs on an axis in the middle.

battle of britain, jet thunder.. great stuff!

I have received my vector expansion unit and it is fun.

I was playing it in the wwii online. Even without the reading of X,Y,Z the device is good because it suppresses that issue of shifting in your seat slightly and the whole view panning unexpectedly.

I think a good option would be to mix mouse view with head panning.

I really like the idea of the X,Y,Z shifting, that can effectively make the monitor as if you're looking through a window (to kill stereo depth perception close one eye ) with a world beyond i imagine.

well, I plan to start figuring out how to interface this into the game soon. I think I will have a few modes of operation.

mouse pan only.
vector expansion x,y,z,paning
vector expansion x,y,z, mouse panning <- this will actually be my favoured mode.