Well, we don't really know if that has anything to do with the strange problem I'm seeing do we? Or, do you know that's what's doing it? If not, I'd say wait and see if anyone else is seeing the same thing. It seems very odd to me that it is peculiar only to certain maps. The range on the TSD doesn't make a difference, 5, 10, or 25. I could try some more maps but I have another problem that gives me a CTD on Yemen after about 10 seconds in the cockpit. Maybe someone else will give some input. It could be a case of "mind over matter." If nobody else minds then it don't matter.

One other thing I may as well mention in case you are poking around in that code. I've always thought your high res mfd was one of the cooler mods done to this sim. One of the reasons I like Apaches best is because I fly without a cockpit most of the time and in the Apache the colours of the high res NAV screen are the same as in the cockpit but in the Comanche without a cockpit the colours of the NAV screen are missing and you see shades of green. It's not a big deal to me because I stick with Apaches most of the time but I just thought I'd mention it since exhaustive testing is impossible for the programmers to do.

craig, what's wrong with the alexander picture? silly question maybe but I don't know what you mean...

Sorry for the confusion. I can see how I didn't explain that very well. There's nothing wrong with the Alexander picture. It looks great. I only put it there for a comparison with the inferior image to illustrate the difference between two different maps with everything else constant. Thanks, Craig

I've done some more testing and it looks like there are two different things going on here. I tested most of the maps with a recent exec and it seems that Alexander is the only map that has the cleaner looking drawing. Maybe that's just because of the shape of the terrain itself (flat sea and steep mountains). That's the only wild guess I can come up with.

There is a difference between the old and new executables which looks like it probably is what you mentioned about the drawing optimization. You can easily see the triangle versus square shapes. You can also see why there is such a framerate difference with the range at 25km. An option would be good for me because I always used the 10km range anyway. But, since I'm the only one who has noticed or wondered about this then maybe it's not worth worrying about for just one person. If it's easy though, why not if you don't mind? At least I know what the deal is now so thanks a lot for the replies.

Version 160w12:



Version 162w2t9:

[img]http://chambcra.freeshell.org/162w2t9[/img]

Switch to keyboard, and you've got yourself some assistance on the hover. Maybe you've got to look there in the source code. Just a hint, but I'm no expert...

I think the FM is realistic as it is. When doing the gunner's job I'm in need of a pilot to take care of hovering. Just as in real life.

Although, I think it's a good thing to help the user a tad. Should be an option in eech.ini, "hover assistance"?

craig, I've just tested the latest exe (compiled from the cvs). I've taken a screenshot from lebanon (alexander simply has a very detailed digital terrain model it seems). You see the current and the max detail shots. The trick for the max detail maps is that I draw each gridcell in four times, as four triangles, using a calculated value for the center of the cell. Something like this:
o---o
|\ /|
| o |
|/ \|
o---o
So there is one drawing of a square instead of 4 triangles, which slows down the framerate for 10 and 25 km ranges.
The level of detail can be set easily in eech.ini. It doesn't affect the contour lines btw.

I could also use shift-D to switch between high res and lower res because that is used for changing the clutter level, but I always only use D for that...

Gotcha,
Is the max detail option available in version 171? I wasn't able to get any detail better than my screenshots cycling through all the options with ctrl-D. Is the max detail what you propose for a new ini option? That would be cool. Some people have very fast hardware today and it keeps getting faster so the slowdown may not be a problem for some and also others in the future.

I don't quite follow your statement about the shift-D.

The Alexander map was made with a higher than default polygon count. There's an option in the map making tool. It will go higher yet if anyone wants to try it. I'm pretty sure all Mavericks maps were made with the same resolution setting. I know the Grand Canyon map, where I took my last screenshots, was made with the same polygon resolution as Alexander.

No, in 171 is wasn't activated. I mean that I can use shift-D to toggle between max and regular detail setting instead of using an eech.ini option.
About alexander what is the original database? Where did you get it from?

Okay. I see. For some reason the statement makes perfect sense to me today.

Starshoy made the Alexander map so I don't for sure where the original came from but I would guess he got it from http://seamless.usgs.gov/. It's the best source I think by far. You can get 10m, 30m, and 90m resolution SRTM Geotiff formats. It was probably the 30m. For a map that size the 10m size wouldn't be allowable to download and would have to be purchased on CD. At the resolution he used with the map tool you get 512 triangles per sector so you get two triangles in a 128 meter square. So, you can see the map tool is cutting down the resolution a lot but it's still a fair bit higher than the stock maps.

figured it would be SRTM. COuld we simply replace the original maps with this 128x128 grid map, keeping the rest?
hmmm - you would have to change the texture id files too ...

Just a quick note on the collective: it is possible to override the speed limit of altitude-hold (maybe as another, optional hover mode). I have done that myself once, but the problem was that it was TOO effective: you could practically slalom between buildings at full speed with ease. It felt very arcadish (and very fun, too!), but someone might want to use it, as it would make life somewhat easier during combat. While it is unrealistic, flying without a gunman is unrealistic too, as I often say.

Another ways to improve collective control: increase the delay of collective input. So when I go from 40% to 60% on my stick, the collective finally gets to 60% but over a longer period of time - this might eliminate some of the overcorrections. Of course, this gets farther from realistic control model.

Even more arcade way of doing things: make an "auto altitude" mode of control input, where the axis controls not the collective, but altitude itself (within a specified range). For example, if the range is between 20ft and 300ft, then keeping the axis at 50% would hold the helo at 160ft above ground.

I doubt it. EECH terrain is not actually based on polygons but what are called 3d_faces. A 3d_face can have up to 32 points and all the points may not lie on the same plane. It's more efficient because you can have more or less points depending on the detail of the terrain. For example, you only need a single 4 point 3d_face to perfectly describe a whole sector in the middle of the ocean.

I don't think you could get the elevations to line up with the elevations (y coordinate) in the trees, power lines, bridges, etc. files. It would be tough to put in all the roads and rivers too. I've been working on putting road polys into a Rob Fox map for six months. I think I'm only half way there with over 3,000 lines of code and that will only have a flat road (no road bank) if it works. I guess really a homemade map may have higher resolution around the mountain peaks but the stock maps have much higher resolution where it's really needed like the rivers and roads.

Rob Fox map:


EECH stock map:

upped code that toggles TSD detail, shift-D in game

Cool. Sounds good. Thanks.

its a eech.ini option afterall, shift-D was taken by arneh stuff

Another little improvement for the Longbow. Now the radar page has zoom capability. Press Shift+Keypad- to zoom, and Shift+Keypad+ to unzoom. In zoomed mode the radar display shows an area of 500x500 meters centered on the selected target.

Also moving targets have a little dot in the centre of the target symbol.

A view of a convoy 7km away:

Someone ought to implement terrain LOD in EECH someday...


Something like this:




Because then you can reasonably render visibilities of 20km and more.



Considering all this, EECH's "static" terrain LOD is quite an interesting approach, though of course you loose the ability to have smooth slopes at all.