headshake and eyebehaviour

[scary_pigeon]

we're all familiar with headshake.

 

great flightsims like IL2 have it. it seems like a good idea to give an impression of what its like to experience manouvers in a plane.

 

what nobody has is eye roll.

 

If you get a video camera and hook it up to a tv - see how crazy and disorientating it is when you roll the camera 45 degrees one way or the other - the whole world tips on its side on the TV...

 

...yet if you on right now roll your head 45 degree - things done seem to roll like they on the TV.

 

why? what is the difference?

 

the difference is eyeroll.

 

if you look in the mirror and put your head up 90 degrees one way or the other the eye actually rolls within the socket to maintain a global alignment with the vertical - this is a balance cue.

 

so I have been wondering if the virtual eye in a game should align to the current gravity field example:

 

this is how things I think would look from the human eye if doing a gentle turn.

 

this is how I think things would look from either a fixed camera or a human eye responding to gforcing which tend to make the pilot feel as though the G field is through the bottom of the plane rather than down to the ground as in a very gentle bank.

 

this will be a turn on and offable feature. Personally I think in tests it is absolutely wonderful - the missing link to my real experiences of flight and being on the ground playing a sim. Dante though who has also been up and about in the air thinks the effect is awful - disorientating and completely false- so it is clearly a taste issue.

 

it gives you some advantages - when zoomed in from the cockpit just looking at the target - you can often become disorientated - if alls you can see is earth or blue sky you have no visual feedback of your roll angle.

 

but seeing the the target on the hud and the hud glass roll because of the eye makes things like straff attacks when diving easier (for me).

 

I am currious what other people think though.

Edited June 29, 2004 by scary_pigeon

[+MadJeff]

I have to say the idea sounds great, but I would have to see it in action before making a final call. It would probably take some getting used to. ;)

 

As long as it was a user-selectable effect, I think it would be a cool feature.

[[667th]_Marine]

sounds like a good idea to me...Jeff's idea was good also..lol it'd take a little bit to get used to...looks cool though..cant wait for this sim!!

 

Semper Fi

[scary_pigeon]

one idea i have pondered is dizzyness modelling.

 

if you start messing about spinning yourself in circles when you stop the ground appears to tilt.

 

i suspect this because your eye is rolling to match the balance in you ear (which continue to change because the liquid in your balance parts of your ear are still sloshing a bit)

 

there would be opportunity for a currious Role Playing mode in dogfight servers - the more of an ace you are, the less dissorientation you suffer from - perhaps even CFS3 style improved gforce tolerance - such a policy would tend to make virtual pilots in dogfight servers understand the value of survival better.

 

no more ditching planes to get a new one because its got a few little hole in it?

 

this would be an odd feature too. I have no idea how it would play in an online setting - looking forward to trying it out to see if its a flight or a flop of and idea.

[SDirickson]

Like the head-bob feature in LO-MAC, I'd definately want it as a user-controlled feature, especially for people with TrackIR. TrackIR can be disorienting in itself, without having to worry about which way your eyes are going to tilt in a turn.

[+Dante-JT]

Good poll Steve :)

 

Myself and Steve are always discussing this issue, at the current iteration of Jet Thunder's engine the effect is put to a minimum, so it's OK i think.

 

But the effect in full strenght (as show in the upper pic that Steve posted) looks like the plane's pilot seat has a pivot in the base and keeps pivoting to the contrary sense of plane's roll :) When I drive a bike/motorbike and I do hard, knee-on-the-road turns, I align my head to the front of the bike and I feel like if the road/horizon ahead is tilting, not the bike - well that's just me, dunno how it feels for other bikers/flyers..

 

The best will be to wait until we reach alpha status so we can present JT's alpha for some test by real fighter pilots - at the moment we already received very useful input by pilots, specially Sean Trestrail, who sent a diagram showing strained observation from cockpit view and casual observation (rom Mirage's cockpit)- more about this issue later ;)

[scary_pigeon]

yes, definately turn off and onable it should be.

 

personally as I said, when I added it in, i thought corr, wow - this is like the best think I've ever seen ever in a flightsim...

 

...and dante, also a keen flightsimer takes compeletey opposition point of view - in microcosm this could be a good representation of what opinion would be in the flightsim community. so the feature must be switchable or people would just be offended by it. or perhaps not even have the feature at all to avoid controversy - since no other flightsim AFAIK attempts to model eye-brain behaviour. infact, I dont know of a single game ever which does.

 

there may be differences in the eye-brain behaviour of different people too which could make it appear very false to some people and very true to others.

 

any input from anybody who knows more about this would be welcome.

[scary_pigeon]

But the effect in full strenght (as show in the upper pic that Steve posted) looks like the plane's pilot seat has a pivot in the base and keeps pivoting to the contrary sense of plane's roll :) When I drive a bike/motorbike and I do hard, knee-on-the-road turns, I align my head to the front of the bike and I feel like if the road/horizon ahead is tilting, not the bike - well that's just me, dunno how it feels for other bikers/flyers..

yes. i think the effect was too extreme when I first tried it. it was a case of corr - ive got a new effect - do it to the max and over do it.

 

i suppose like lensflare effects when people first started doing those.

 

I feel like the road/horizonis tilting too - even in a pedal bike if I'm in a nutty mood.

 

 

[MBot]

An interesting idea. It sounds as it could realy add another depth to the feeling of flying. But like some others I would have to test it myselfe to see if it realy is a top or a flop. It certenly had to be an option. Perhaps even configurable in a .ini file ( like lomacs Lua ) how exactly the view should react.

 

The effect itself can clearly be seen by just turning your head ( right now in front of the computer ). But while flying myselfe I didn't experience this effect. I always had the feeling that my view is level with the cockpit panel and that the horizon is banked. The cockpit is the reference while the outside world rolls. So I would say that this effect in a sim would be unrealistic ( others might have experienced it differently ). But as our current hardware can simulate the feeling of flying only to a minimal extend, such a feature might indeed enhance the feeling of flying ( while strictly speaking beeing unrealistic ). But as I said above, without trying it out first hand I couln't judge on that matter.

[PG_Raptor]

I like the sound of the idea, I think it would be neat. As some people are saying, it may look bad to some, but realistic to others. Instead of just an on/off switch, could it be possible to put in a slider for that? 0% would be no correction, 100% would be the highest amount of correction. That way, people can set the amount to what they believe to be most realistic.

 

And what about natural head movement, like LOMAC? That adds a lot, especially if modelled right. If these two could be used together, you could have one hell of a naturally moving view.

Edited June 29, 2004 by PG_Raptor

[scary_pigeon]

yes it can be a slider - for example currently in the test i have two numbers

 

headshake constant with an arbitary + range

and eye roll constant with a range from 0.0..1.0

[Guest Shadowcat]

Eye-roll... sounds nifty, but I'm curious as to what the effect would be on TrackIR-users (I'm one of them).

 

If you reference the example screen above, and imagine that during this turn you (the pilot) turn to look to your left. The screen should pan diagonally down and right.

 

If you are using a TrackIR, you will have to move your head directly left to achieve this. If you try to tilt match your head and "move left" in accordance with the on-screen orientation of the cockpit, you will end up moving your simulated head both left and up (which will probably appear on-screen as more up than left, due to the eye-roll effect).

 

Do any of the team have access to a Track IR unit to see how this works in practice?

[scary_pigeon]

me :) I have one...

 

...the company sent me one to help ensure that I include it in native mode.

 

Currently I'm using it from time to time with mouse emulation.

 

theres still a few bugs with the eye roll and mouse view - the eye roll I think rolls in incorrect direction when head is turned away from dead ahead. It is an easy to fix thing. - but i've not found it particularly disorienting when you do pan around because eye roll happens after the pan so its not like when its diaganol u look upwards yet find your view moving up and right.

[Guest Shadowcat]

i've not found it particularly disorienting when you do pan around because eye roll happens after the pan so its not like when its diaganol u look upwards yet find your view moving up and right.

Now I'm totally confused :)

 

But no matter! Definitely keep it in, and we'll see how it works in due course, and can switch it off if it's too weird for us :)

[SDirickson]

Like MBoT said, it definately depends on the pilot and the situation. YOu're feeling of gravity during a turn is highly dependent on how many G's you are pulling. In a break turn, the feeling is much the same as in a loop. Your eyes and head aren't gonna be concerned with the horizon, they'll be stuck with the aircraft. However, at low G's, when you can feel the tilt much easier, then your eyes will try to adjust it seems.

[PG_Raptor]

Do you guys have any videos showing the effects of this yet? I'd really like to see it in action.

[PG_Raptor]

Any luck with a video?

[scary_pigeon]

edited out

Edited December 10, 2005 by scary_pigeon

[DamienB]

Think it's a bad idea myself. When I'm flying, rolling the aircraft is completely different to rolling my head - the horizon does tilt exactly as it does with the video camera example you mention, and your eyes do not compensate. If you tilt your head when flying, you get the eye roll compensation thing, but rolling the aircraft is totally different.

[scary_pigeon]

Think it's a bad idea myself. When I'm flying, rolling the aircraft is completely different to rolling my head - the horizon does tilt exactly as it does with the video camera example you mention, and your eyes do not compensate. If you tilt your head when flying, you get the eye roll compensation thing, but rolling the aircraft is totally different.

 

 

that be because it doesnt take much g to change where subjective vertical is. when you roll your already doing some turning. if you was hovering though, it might be different.

[Aerny]

In my opinion it feels more organic and thus realistic. You got my vote.

[DamienB]

Certainly isn't more realistic. In reality, beyond 20-30 degrees or so, any angle of bank is perceived as more extreme than it really is, not less which is the effect this mod would have.

[scary_pigeon]

the effect is demonstrated quite well sometimes with reading. try holding a book sideways at 90 degrees. the writing is not easy to read.

 

bit if you hold the book upright and move your head 90 degrees over it becomes quite easy to read in comparison to sitting upright with book leant over. well for me it is anyway.

 

as ever, these sorts of effect - switch them on or switch them off.

[Aerny]

...

Edited April 6, 2006 by Aerny