I agree. 3D in CMANO might just be sensory overload taken to the Nth degree. It might be a neat feature in replay mode to see where you made mistakes, but even then it would be very CPU intensive for little gain.
As an aside. I just reinstalled Falcon 4 from 1998 which allowed me to install Falcon BMS 4.33 from 2016. I wanted to see for myself what 18 years of development on a piece of software could accomplish. All I can say is astounding!
BUT...and this is a huge difference. CMANO is about lots of platforms modeling a huge array of variables: land, sea, air, and space all under the direct control of the player. Falcon BMS models air and ground war to an astounding degree. The player, however, only directly controls one platform. The learning curve for Falcon is steep - as complex as actually operating an F-16 in real life, absent the sensory experience of actual flight. The amount of information presented can be overwhelming, but is manageable with practice. I'm afraid the level of detail in BMS would completely crush everyone were it translated to CMANO. Just my opinions anyway.
To see what 3D can buy, go look at some World of Warships videos. I really think I like the format for CMANO exactly as it is. I can see a use for a 3D battlespace (not platform) model in replay - or more precisely, in pre-strike planning. But in actual execution, I prefer what we have.
Flying below the radar
Moderator: MOD_Command
RE: Flying below the radar
NO 3D PLEASE! All this game needs is new simulation feaures/db updates/further refinement.. graphics wise, it's perfect!
RE: Flying below the radar
ORIGINAL: Amnectrus
ORIGINAL: mikmyk
The game does show estimated ranges. These are the circles with the dotted lines.
Mike
I meant the estimated range relative to the unit you currently have selected. Like, if I have an F-15E at 200 ft, it would be cool if Command could draw the radar range circles around surface radars at the distance of what their radar horizon would be against a target at 200 ft.
Extending that thought, there's all sorts of cool things that could potentially be done to visualize radar performance, like drawing the range circles taking into account the RCS of your currently selected unit and the estimated tracking ability of the radar, or drawing them with terrain radar shadows, or making them shorter based on jamming effects, etc. Might be prohibitive in terms of CPU processing power, but it would be a really cool way to get a better mental picture of what various radars are and aren't capable of in different settings and against different units.
I meant the estimated range relative to the unit you currently have selected. Like, if I have an F-15E at 200 ft, it would be cool if Command could draw the radar range circles around surface radars at the distance of what their radar horizon would be against a target at 200 ft.
Extending that thought, there's all sorts of cool things that could potentially be done to visualize radar performance, like drawing the range circles taking into account the RCS of your currently selected unit and the estimated tracking ability of the radar, or drawing them with terrain radar shadows, or making them shorter based on jamming effects, etc. Might be prohibitive in terms of CPU processing power, but it would be a really cool way to get a better mental picture of what various radars are and aren't capable of in different settings and against different units.
Great idea! It would make it massively easier to plan airs strikes against a tough air defense system.
RE: Flying below the radar
ORIGINAL: Amnectrus
ORIGINAL: mikmyk
The game does show estimated ranges. These are the circles with the dotted lines.
Mike
I meant the estimated range relative to the unit you currently have selected. Like, if I have an F-15E at 200 ft, it would be cool if Command could draw the radar range circles around surface radars at the distance of what their radar horizon would be against a target at 200 ft.
Extending that thought, there's all sorts of cool things that could potentially be done to visualize radar performance, like drawing the range circles taking into account the RCS of your currently selected unit and the estimated tracking ability of the radar, or drawing them with terrain radar shadows, or making them shorter based on jamming effects, etc. Might be prohibitive in terms of CPU processing power, but it would be a really cool way to get a better mental picture of what various radars are and aren't capable of in different settings and against different units.
That's a great idea!
Definitely +1
I need ten females for each male...
RE: Flying below the radar
Did someone put this on the feature request thread.
Keep in mind that this isn't a simple equation.
Quantitative - RCS, Radar Power, altitude of target, altitude of transmitter, altitude of receiver, processing capability of radar system, etc.
Qualitative - crew experience, weather, jamming, target background and clutter, etc.
I think you are WAY over-simplifying both what it takes to do this and how useful it will be.
Keep in mind that this isn't a simple equation.
Quantitative - RCS, Radar Power, altitude of target, altitude of transmitter, altitude of receiver, processing capability of radar system, etc.
Qualitative - crew experience, weather, jamming, target background and clutter, etc.
I think you are WAY over-simplifying both what it takes to do this and how useful it will be.
RE: Flying below the radar
I apologize ahead of time for getting long winded here.
I know this wouldn't be easy, and the devs probably have more than enough to keep them busy already without radically reworking their visualization system on top of everything else, so I'm reluctant to officially request this as something to be on the feature list just yet. And the existing system works, though I do still think it would be cool to draw the 2D range circles with various changes.
But with all respect, I strongly disagree with the people who say 3D isn't needed or useful in games like this. To bring this back around to the subject of the thread, if I have an F-15E at 200 ft, it looks identical to one at 40000 ft. I have to mouseover it to tell the altitude. And if there's a ridge between it and a radar site, I have to mouseover the entire ridge to see if it's high enough to block the radar's view. But if I could just tilt the view, I could see immediately both the altitude of the plane and the approximate view of the radar site, no mousing required. Or if I have a stack of planes flying CAP at different altitudes, I could see immediately which one's where. Is a sub inside the layer? Just look. Etc.
And I'm guessing here, but it seems to me that all the radar calculations needed to tell whether a radar can detect a given target must be already being done in realtime, so perhaps (guessing again) extracting the necessary visualization data wouldn't be quite as hard as it might be. I used to play F-19 Stealth Fighter way (way way) back in the day, and one thing it gave was a cockpit readout of your current approximate detectability. Obviously it was nowhere even remotely as sophisticated as the CMANO radar model, but nevertheless it gave a simple visual indicator of how strong a given radar signal was relative to your current location and attitude. If you were in a high steep banked turn, your detectability went up, and if you were low and slow, it went down. So if you were trying to pick your way around a bunch of radar sites to get into a target, you had at least some indication of how close you could get to them without being seen. I was thrilled to see that CMANO includes the F-19 as a hypothetical unit, because from the time I got the game I've wanted to make some Red Storm Rising scenarios, but it's going to take a lot of test scenarios to figure out how I want to plot out the missions, checking to see how likely the F-19 is to be picked up at any given range and altitude from all the different radar sites. It sure would be cool if I could check a box or something and the range circles would just adjust themselves...
I've played quite a few wargames. I have fond memories of many 2D games, like Steel Panthers, Close Combat, and Highway to the Reich (speaking of which I believe I saw someone with a Panther Games badge in one of these threads somewhere). But once I played Combat Mission, 2D games were just never quite the same again. It's like the difference between Google Maps and Google Earth (or World Wind of course). There's just so much more data that can be seen at once when it's presented in 3D.
I know this wouldn't be easy, and the devs probably have more than enough to keep them busy already without radically reworking their visualization system on top of everything else, so I'm reluctant to officially request this as something to be on the feature list just yet. And the existing system works, though I do still think it would be cool to draw the 2D range circles with various changes.
But with all respect, I strongly disagree with the people who say 3D isn't needed or useful in games like this. To bring this back around to the subject of the thread, if I have an F-15E at 200 ft, it looks identical to one at 40000 ft. I have to mouseover it to tell the altitude. And if there's a ridge between it and a radar site, I have to mouseover the entire ridge to see if it's high enough to block the radar's view. But if I could just tilt the view, I could see immediately both the altitude of the plane and the approximate view of the radar site, no mousing required. Or if I have a stack of planes flying CAP at different altitudes, I could see immediately which one's where. Is a sub inside the layer? Just look. Etc.
And I'm guessing here, but it seems to me that all the radar calculations needed to tell whether a radar can detect a given target must be already being done in realtime, so perhaps (guessing again) extracting the necessary visualization data wouldn't be quite as hard as it might be. I used to play F-19 Stealth Fighter way (way way) back in the day, and one thing it gave was a cockpit readout of your current approximate detectability. Obviously it was nowhere even remotely as sophisticated as the CMANO radar model, but nevertheless it gave a simple visual indicator of how strong a given radar signal was relative to your current location and attitude. If you were in a high steep banked turn, your detectability went up, and if you were low and slow, it went down. So if you were trying to pick your way around a bunch of radar sites to get into a target, you had at least some indication of how close you could get to them without being seen. I was thrilled to see that CMANO includes the F-19 as a hypothetical unit, because from the time I got the game I've wanted to make some Red Storm Rising scenarios, but it's going to take a lot of test scenarios to figure out how I want to plot out the missions, checking to see how likely the F-19 is to be picked up at any given range and altitude from all the different radar sites. It sure would be cool if I could check a box or something and the range circles would just adjust themselves...
I've played quite a few wargames. I have fond memories of many 2D games, like Steel Panthers, Close Combat, and Highway to the Reich (speaking of which I believe I saw someone with a Panther Games badge in one of these threads somewhere). But once I played Combat Mission, 2D games were just never quite the same again. It's like the difference between Google Maps and Google Earth (or World Wind of course). There's just so much more data that can be seen at once when it's presented in 3D.
RE: Flying below the radar
Hi guys
We do have plans for some UI updates while maintaining complexity with our game models. Graphics vs. complexity isn't the trade-off it once was.
Thanks!
Mike
We do have plans for some UI updates while maintaining complexity with our game models. Graphics vs. complexity isn't the trade-off it once was.
Thanks!
Mike
RE: Flying below the radar
I have personally always been a proponent of 'Game over Graphics' since way back to 'Tactics II', and have lived the life of real C2 systems that were decidedly 2D. However, I'm changing my mind lately, Command is doing it.
A real C2 system has a bunch of people monitoring it, real pilots flying the AC to give them prompts, pre-set warning parameters etc, in essence a staff within a system. The player doesn't have that, but we give him similar problem sets.
So without turning the game into a 'eye candy' flight simulator, anything that can be done to assist the player in making, what are in reality fairly complex, decisions should be done. As long as it doesn't affect the core elements of the game.
So: decision support - good; eye candy: bad. Tricky balance.
Just my $0.02CAD
B
A real C2 system has a bunch of people monitoring it, real pilots flying the AC to give them prompts, pre-set warning parameters etc, in essence a staff within a system. The player doesn't have that, but we give him similar problem sets.
So without turning the game into a 'eye candy' flight simulator, anything that can be done to assist the player in making, what are in reality fairly complex, decisions should be done. As long as it doesn't affect the core elements of the game.
So: decision support - good; eye candy: bad. Tricky balance.
Just my $0.02CAD
B
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And our blog: http://northernfury.us/blog/post2/
Twitter: @NorthernFury94 or Facebook https://www.facebook.com/northernfury/
RE: Flying below the radar
Yes. I know we've looked at this one and a couple of others. The goal will be native not API to something else though.
Mike
RE: Flying below the radar
ORIGINAL: Gunner98
I have personally always been a proponent of 'Game over Graphics' since way back to 'Tactics II', and have lived the life of real C2 systems that were decidedly 2D. However, I'm changing my mind lately, Command is doing it.
A real C2 system has a bunch of people monitoring it, real pilots flying the AC to give them prompts, pre-set warning parameters etc, in essence a staff within a system. The player doesn't have that, but we give him similar problem sets.
So without turning the game into a 'eye candy' flight simulator, anything that can be done to assist the player in making, what are in reality fairly complex, decisions should be done. As long as it doesn't affect the core elements of the game.
So: decision support - good; eye candy: bad. Tricky balance.
Just my $0.02CAD
B
Yeah the game will never be a tactical flight simulator like DCS but we'd like to do some deeper models and just want it to look better. It will be an opportunity to learn, try and be creative which keeps it fun for us.
Mike
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peterc100248
- Posts: 94
- Joined: Mon Mar 21, 2016 6:37 pm
RE: Flying below the radar
Mike
I simply cannot find the YouTube video on this subject ( of the 3D threat representations ) but you may have seen it, or one similar. My opinion...that would be an incredible addition to CMANO in the setting of a strike planner. For me, that would not be something I would use anywhere else but would be invaluable in laying out course and altitude threading of an airstrike package to a target. Ships are basically 2D, so it wouldn't be needed there for planning.
Pete
I simply cannot find the YouTube video on this subject ( of the 3D threat representations ) but you may have seen it, or one similar. My opinion...that would be an incredible addition to CMANO in the setting of a strike planner. For me, that would not be something I would use anywhere else but would be invaluable in laying out course and altitude threading of an airstrike package to a target. Ships are basically 2D, so it wouldn't be needed there for planning.
Pete