Pleading for Labels and other aids

[themightysrc 5]

"And it's definitely true that in some ways the full DiD experience is even harder than what real life pilots had to face, because the visibility from our "cockpit" is not at all comparable to what you can actually see from a real airplane. Everybody who's ever been in a real aircraft and looked around knows that you can see much better in reality than in the best of flight sims."

 

Precisely. And that's why I feel it's such a good mod to OFF.

 

"Does anybody have a colour code or something for experimenting with the label colours settings?"

 

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Leave them all white!!!

[Herr Prop-Wasche 7]

The numbers are in hexdecimal, with A=10, B=12, C=13, D=14, E=15, and F=16. To represent colors in CFS3, each number is preceded by an 0x. The first two numbers after that represent opacity, as explained above, and the next six numbers represent the amount of red, green, and blue or RGB values. Each color ranges from a value of 0 to 255. So, 0x00000000 is a solid black, representing the absence of color, and 0x00FFFFFF is solid white, representing the maximum amount of red, green, and blue mixed together.

 

Red= 0x00FF0000

Green=0x0000FF00

Blue=0x000000FF

 

and so on.

[Hasse Wind 46]

Yep, it's Hebrew (or more like some obscure Chinese dialect) to me. I'll stick with von Baur's colours. But thanks for the explanation, HPW.

[Olham 164]

Hasse Wind, here is a colour chart with some samples you may find useful.

You have to add the opacity value in front of the codes.

 

0x2F will be quite transparent; try also 0x4Fand 0x6F - I have even used 0x7F.

Enjoy!

 

 

[von Baur 54]

Fortiesboy, if OFF (CFS3, actually, since I would imagine it's a holdover from that) would provide a tactile response through my joystick to taking damage I would gladly turn all those lines off. Unfortunately it's the only way I know when I'm being hit. As I said, the message lines are rendered the same colors and opacity as the labels, so with the settings I use they're almost invisible but not gone completely. The external view was strictly to take the screenshots for this topic. Unless I'm skydiving I like to stay inside the plane.

 

77scout, trust me (or better still give it a shot), using the modified labels is no picnic. While they're pretty easy to see in my screenshot, when they're moving around that's not the case. And while I'm on the subject, they're not all that easy to see in the static shot. For instance, the Alb at the far left is labeled but you have to look closely to even see it, let alone read it...and he's close enough to clearly id the type visually. The same is true to a slightly lesser extent for the three DH2's on the right, particularly the uppermost and lowermost. And there are three labels on the airfield: two 'Bogeys' in the area of the hangars and the 'Airfield' label right smack in the middle of it. I'd wager that most haven't noticed anything but the airplane labels that are set against the dark green of the trees. Add movement to the mix and the difficulty increases dramatically. Trying to find those labels against light clouds or blue sky is almost impossible and in the hazy area several degrees either side of the horizon they can't be seen at all.

 

I agree with SirMike's feelings that labels can help compensate for those of us not blessed with the wherewithall to have three good-sized widescreen monitors and the graphics cards to keep them supplied with information at a framerate higher than a slideshow at an old folk's home. I can attest from my skydiving days that a small airplane (Cessna 4-6 passenger class, or about the size of a scout) can be identified from a distance of two miles, and larger craft at three or more. That would translate to ranges of about 3400 for the scouts and 5100 for the two-seaters. Does this game even display more than a dot from those distances?

 

Olham, it's not your fault. I understand your purpose. BTW, get yourself a good force feedback stick and you won't need the game's stall warning. I can feel a stall approaching before the warning light comes on.

 

NOT WHITE!!! White stands out too much against too many different backgrounds. As the color chart provided by Olham shows it's a light gray. This blends in better in general and when made mostly transparent adds to the difficulty in seeing them. The purpose of the modified labels is to aid in identifying specific flight members under noncombat conditions, not locating the enemy and highlighting them in combat. As I've said before, if you look for these labels in combat istead of looking for planes you're going to get a lot of practice enlisting new pilots.

[SirMike1983 3]

When I started this thread, I didn't mean to ask everyone to switch their Labels on - I was only

advocating the freedom of choice; and I wanted to highlight the advantages Labels can have.

But surely: everyone to his own likes.

 

SirMike's post made me think of another thing we "Full DiD Hardliners" have eliminated:

the simulation warning lines.

I must say, that I found it quite useful to know, when my aircraft was threatening to stall.

A real life pilot told me once, that he finds it hard to fly sims, cause they don't provide him with

the "belly feeling". What he meant was, that he can actually feel the plane being close to stalling.

And the simulation warning can give you just this "belly feeling" back - even if it costs a bit of

"full realism" or might look a bit arcadish.

 

But as I said - everyone to his own likes.

 

 

I agree about the warnings: I fly with them on because I view them as simulating that "belly feeling" of when something is wrong. In a real plane you can feel the Gs and that will tell you when you're pulling back "too much for the airframe" and also that classic "sluggish vibration" that you get in a stall.

 

Like the labels I think they are consistent with realism, but arcade looking because of their colors and appearance.

Edited August 31, 2010 by SirMike1983

[Fortiesboy 3]

themightysrc -- S!

Oh, I've thought about it a lot. There's no way that writing, popping up all over the screen, is giving me immersion.

 

Sir Mike - simulating that belly feeling is what a forcefeedback stick can help with, no? Certainly the Butt kicker can.

I don't have FF but I definitely know when I've been hit. Never had a problem knowing that.

 

I accept that,if you want to know if the plane you are seeing is enemy or friend ( at a point where RL vision would tell you), then at present it's difficult. But IIRC on some sims there is an ability to target the next enemy ( or friendly }- so, if it could be possible in OFF, then that would eliminate need for labels,no? After all, the enemy fly in squads, so padlock one enemy and the others with him must be enemy too. Come the dogfight, use the "padlock the nearest enemy" button.

In this sim, this type of padlocking doesn't happen, without preliminary use of the TAC, so it's matter of taste re the labels, I suppose!

Maybe the devs can give us this padlocking in Phase 4, or does the coding prevent this?

 

Mind you I still say that if you use labels there is no way you can seriously say that any AI setting is too easy. That would be cheeky as hell.

I've said in previous posts, re the AI, that I fly on the AI easy setting. And with AI firing only from the close range (and not 1000 yds like before )

I have urged those who think it is too easy, to fly "full real" against three Aces and see how many times they win.

With labels on it's easy. Without, you would swear that one sets himself as bait while the others sneak up and get you.

And you lose more than win.

 

Bottom line for me - WM et al have produced wonderful terrain and scenery to "put us there"- Then you guys stick red and blue writing all over it! How could you?

[Creaghorn 10]

themightysrc -- S!

Oh, I've thought about it a lot. There's no way that writing, popping up all over the screen, is giving me immersion.

 

Sir Mike - simulating that belly feeling is what a forcefeedback stick can help with, no? Certainly the Butt kicker can.

I don't have FF but I definitely know when I've been hit. Never had a problem knowing that.

 

I accept that,if you want to know if the plane you are seeing is enemy or friend ( at a point where RL vision would tell you), then at present it's difficult. But IIRC on some sims there is an ability to target the next enemy ( or friendly }- so, if it could be possible in OFF, then that would eliminate need for labels,no? After all, the enemy fly in squads, so padlock one enemy and the others with him must be enemy too. Come the dogfight, use the "padlock the nearest enemy" button.

In this sim, this type of padlocking doesn't happen, without preliminary use of the TAC, so it's matter of taste re the labels, I suppose!

Maybe the devs can give us this padlocking in Phase 4, or does the coding prevent this?

 

Mind you I still say that if you use labels there is no way you can seriously say that any AI setting is too easy. That would be cheeky as hell.

I've said in previous posts, re the AI, that I fly on the AI easy setting. And with AI firing only from the close range (and not 1000 yds like before )

I have urged those who think it is too easy, to fly "full real" against three Aces and see how many times they win.

With labels on it's easy. Without, you would swear that one sets himself as bait while the others sneak up and get you.

And you lose more than win.

 

Bottom line for me - WM et al have produced wonderful terrain and scenery to "put us there"- Then you guys stick red and blue writing all over it! How could you?

 

i agree. at least for me. maybe it's also a matter of screen and res you fly with. i have a 26" screen with native res 1920x1200, and depending on which weather and which lighting, i can see specks up to 7-8 nm. for me that's ok. and i agree that all those labels are a big time immersion killer. visible or not. at least for me.

of course you can see more sharp in real life than on screen, but in real life they wore goggles, so the peripherical view was affected also, so maybe comparable to a screen. also in BHAH you don't have to deal with dirty goggles, particels of oil etc., cold, foggy goggles and windshields, sun which really makes objects invisible when looking near it (in BHAH the sun is bright, but doesn't hide the enemy nor does it hurt you).

 

the other point is, that you in sims mostly know more about the enemy than the pilots in real life did. and labels take away this immersion also IMHO.

in real they hardly ever knew who they fought against. udet guynemer duel is rather the exception that udet knew that it was guynemer. they didn't have a dogfight where the pilot saw a squirrel on the enemies fuselage and knew, that's baptiste pierre d' jean paul belmondo d' orleans. mccudden often fought "greentail" and never knew who he was. actually he fought different greentails (jasta 5) and thought it was the same enemy. in the vossfight they didn't know if it's voss, wolff or richthofen until finding the dead body. same goes for albert ball. what i'm trying to say is that if you see some special markings of the most successfull enemies, you might know who he is. ok, richthofen is red, at least partially. voss has a heart on the fuselage etc. but i doubt strongly that they knew every enemie because of his markings. they didn't even realized it was richthofen until they found his papers in the jacket (probably all pilots knew who he was, maybe not every ordinary australian m.g. gunner)

of course it's more fun to know who you fight against. but the realism should be that you don't know until you shoot him down, he doesn't burn to a crisp and he fells on your side of the lines.

anyway. for me labels are no go. but everybody as he likes

[+Winder 32]

Fortiesboy, if OFF (CFS3, actually, since I would imagine it's a holdover from that) would provide a tactile response through my joystick to taking damage I would gladly turn all those lines off. Unfortunately it's the only way I know when I'm being hit. As I said, the message lines are rendered the same colors and opacity as the labels, so with the settings I use they're almost invisible but not gone completely. The external view was strictly to take the screenshots for this topic. Unless I'm skydiving I like to stay inside the plane.

 

77scout, trust me (or better still give it a shot), using the modified labels is no picnic. While they're pretty easy to see in my screenshot, when they're moving around that's not the case. And while I'm on the subject, they're not all that easy to see in the static shot. For instance, the Alb at the far left is labeled but you have to look closely to even see it, let alone read it...and he's close enough to clearly id the type visually. The same is true to a slightly lesser extent for the three DH2's on the right, particularly the uppermost and lowermost. And there are three labels on the airfield: two 'Bogeys' in the area of the hangars and the 'Airfield' label right smack in the middle of it. I'd wager that most haven't noticed anything but the airplane labels that are set against the dark green of the trees. Add movement to the mix and the difficulty increases dramatically. Trying to find those labels against light clouds or blue sky is almost impossible and in the hazy area several degrees either side of the horizon they can't be seen at all.

 

I agree with SirMike's feelings that labels can help compensate for those of us not blessed with the wherewithall to have three good-sized widescreen monitors and the graphics cards to keep them supplied with information at a framerate higher than a slideshow at an old folk's home. I can attest from my skydiving days that a small airplane (Cessna 4-6 passenger class, or about the size of a scout) can be identified from a distance of two miles, and larger craft at three or more. That would translate to ranges of about 3400 for the scouts and 5100 for the two-seaters. Does this game even display more than a dot from those distances?

 

Olham, it's not your fault. I understand your purpose. BTW, get yourself a good force feedback stick and you won't need the game's stall warning. I can feel a stall approaching before the warning light comes on.

 

NOT WHITE!!! White stands out too much against too many different backgrounds. As the color chart provided by Olham shows it's a light gray. This blends in better in general and when made mostly transparent adds to the difficulty in seeing them. The purpose of the modified labels is to aid in identifying specific flight members under noncombat conditions, not locating the enemy and highlighting them in combat. As I've said before, if you look for these labels in combat istead of looking for planes you're going to get a lot of practice enlisting new pilots.

 

 

You should be getting hit sounds - check your sounds sliders in workshops?

 

HTH

 

WM

 

Nice work on the label transparency.

[Creaghorn 10]

 

Nice work on the label transparency.

 

 

i agree. for those who like to have labels, it's a great solution

[themightysrc 5]

hi Winder,

 

Further to my earlier email - can the transparent/opaque labels be added in as a configurable standard to Workshop in P4? If I send you a crate of vodka, perhaps?

 

cheers,

Si

[+Winder 32]

hi Winder,

 

Further to my earlier email - can the transparent/opaque labels be added in as a configurable standard to Workshop in P4? If I send you a crate of vodka, perhaps?

 

cheers,

Si

 

I will be looking into this as a configuration - but no promises...

 

WM

[Hasse Wind 46]

I'd love to see this officially supported in P4. A very nice improvement over the original bright and too obvious labels.

[SirMike1983 3]

The Von Baur changes may be a nice path to setting it up so that the labels only become useful within a certain distance, thereby simulating the improved, but still somewhat imperfect viewing power of the pilot. It also could be tweaked probably so that you only identify the enemy at about the same distance as they can identify you. I think I'll give this a shot next chance I get.

[Olham 164]

As for the hit sounds: I hear them clearly, when my aircraft gets hit.

 

And again for all you purists: I just recommended to the beginners to use Labels to make it

easier to find out about everything. Later they may decide to turn them off.

And I recommend them for SOME of the time, if you want to know, who you meet in the fights.

I have 19 pilots right now, which I fly just after my momentary feelings.

There are more serious (non-aids) pilots, there is one "Full DiD" pilot, and there are others,

which I use, when I am stressed or tired, for a more game-like flying.

I have no problems with that - there is a solution for every condition.

 

And you purists can fly as you want - nobody said you should use Labels, did I?

[von Baur 54]

Winder, yes, I get hit sounds but I believe in a loud engine. My riding lawmower's 12.5 hp single cylinder engine is only slightly closer and less sound-buffered than the nine-cylinder 90+ hp monsters that powered these birds and I'm nearly deaf to everything around me on it. I doubt I'd notice the sound of a bullet passing through fabric at all and wood only if it was uncomfortably close to my head. In combat I don't notice it at all. I only know that I can hear them from being hit during ground attacks.

[+Winder 32]

Winder, yes, I get hit sounds but I believe in a loud engine. My riding lawmower's 12.5 hp single cylinder engine is only slightly closer and less sound-buffered than the nine-cylinder 90+ hp monsters that powered these birds and I'm nearly deaf to everything around me on it. I doubt I'd notice the sound of a bullet passing through fabric at all and wood only if it was uncomfortably close to my head. In combat I don't notice it at all. I only know that I can hear them from being hit during ground attacks.

 

 

You are quite correct most WW1 pilots never heard any hits to their craft they simply could not hear above the engine noise, but the bullet hit sounds are there to be dialed in as an aid, just like the labels, if required.

 

WM

[Olham 164]

Seems to be a question of balance between the cockpit sound and environment.

I would assume, that an Albatros pilot, sitting in a solid wooden craft, would feel

impacts in the fuselage?

[Creaghorn 10]

Seems to be a question of balance between the cockpit sound and environment.

I would assume, that an Albatros pilot, sitting in a solid wooden craft, would feel

impacts in the fuselage?

 

in various literature they said that they could hear the enemies guns rather well and mostly they could also feel the impacts of the bullets. no matter if canvas or wood

[RAF_Louvert 101]

.

 

I have flown in a few open cockpit planes and you don't hear much of anything apart from the engine and the wind. You would likely hear a machine gun going off if it were directly behind you, and in the firsthand accounts I've read that is mentioned from time to time. However, more often than not the flyer knew he was being shot at when he saw the holes appearing in his wings or when he himself got hit, which is why they had to have their heads on a constant swivel. There is also mention made in writings of the day about "feeling" the bullets hit, and I am sure you could if they made contact with a solid part of the aircraft. But I doubt very much you would be able to feel bullets ripping through the fabric, especially over the engine vibration and wind buffeting. BTW, I have my sounds set so that I cannot hear any of the noises below unless I am flying right down over the mud, and I don't hear my opponets MG unless he is very close, (but then I am a bit over the top with my "realism" settings).

 

Cheers!

 

Lou

 

.

[TSmoke 2]

Sorry to bring up this thread again, but was looking for a way to tone down the labels. From what I read it is possible, even if it is all Chinese to me.

 

It doesn't make sense to me and even for messing around with the file to experiment, how in the hell do you edit the 0xFF stuff?? Clicking on it does diddly left or right. Need to D/L a program??

I would like to keep the same stock colors just would like them toned way down, but not to near invisible as the photo in the thread shows as an example.

[TaillyHo 2]

Sorry to bring up this thread again, but was looking for a way to tone down the labels. From what I read it is possible, even if it is all Chinese to me.

 

It doesn't make sense to me and even for messing around with the file to experiment, how in the hell do you edit the 0xFF stuff?? Clicking on it does diddly left or right. Need to D/L a program??

I would like to keep the same stock colors just would like them toned way down, but not to near invisible as the photo in the thread shows as an example.

 

I've just been doing exactly that, TSmoke - you can use Notepad to do the actual file editing. Just right-click on the ViewUI file (and make sure you're editing the one in your docs & settings folder and not the OFF game folder! + usual caution re saving a backup of the original version first), and then chose to open the file with Notepad. It's not an easy read but you can find the line you want to change - especially if you open it with a browser first before then opening it with Notepad. Change the values; save and you're done!

 

Changing them to 6 or 7 (as per Von Baur's how-to on the RSS settings thread) should be a good first up tweak.

 

Alternately, you can save time and effort by going here: http://combatace.com...-label-colours/

and just drop Olham's file in and see if you like it.

 

Good luck!

Edited May 1, 2011 by TaillyHo

[Olham 164]

Thanks for the credits, TaillyHo.

TSmoke, you need to change the first "F" into a number, to change the opacity. My Labels are on 6 right now (I also tried 7); so it would read:

 

EnemyColor="0x6FFF6633

[33LIMA 972]

Re the audibility of gunfire, don't forget that MG rounds make an audible mini-sonic boom - a 'crack', really, it sounds like a dry twig being snapped briskly - which you can hear if the bullet passes close; known to infantrymen as 'crack and thump' with the latter being the sound of the weapon being fired, heard after the 'crack' of the round passing close. Many pilots eg AG Lee in 'No Parachute' recall being alerted to the fact they were being fired on by hearing the gunfire - "...i was banging away with the hammer [to clear a stoppage] when I heard a loud and rapid crak-ak-ak-ak-ak-ak: Tho it's not clear whether they were hearing the crack or the thump, or both together, given that ranges would have neen very short.

 

I would expect that a hit on a plane would also often be audible to (or felt by) the pilot, even if the bullet just passed through fabric, let alone hitting aircraft structure; a strike on tautly-doped linen would be a bit like hitting a drum, very hard. A combination of background noise, adrenaline and tunnel vision might mean that hits were not always noticed. A sim which gave you no indication that your plane was being hit would not I think be realistic and is one I would not want to play.

Edited May 1, 2011 by 33LIMA

[von Baur 54]

Being in tune with his aircraft, I would think a pilot would feel a bullet's impact (certainly with a substantial part of it like metal or wood, possibly fabric to a lesser extent) more quickly than hear it, particularly with the cacophany that would be involved in open-cockpit aerial combat. I'm sure you can all feel when your car, no matter how smoothly it rides, runs over something even as smal as a 1/4" to 1/2" twig. Machine gun fire, OTOH, is a sustained, regular sound, that would be picked up very quickly if you were alert at all. But the presence of machine gun fire does not necessarily indicate that you're taking damage. My thrust here is using the info lines to let me know that in lieu of any response through my force feedback joystick, as many other flight sims I've played has.

 

 

T-Smoke:

I felt the same way when I started looking at this issue. But once you understand it it's really quite simple and elegant.

 

First, the 0X has no direct significance to the labels and I believe it identifies the number to come to the program as a color. The remaing eight digits can be thought of as four groups of 2-digit numbers referring to opacity, red value, green value, and blue value of the color it describes in that order. So what's with the letters? Well, normal two-digit numbers can only describe 100 variations (00-99). But by increasing the number of integers (if that's the correct term) from 10 to 16 two digits can encompass 256 variations. This is what computer geeks (no offense meant ) refer to as "hexi-decimal". So, if you start with the lowest integer as 0 and the highest as F, you count 00, 01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 06, 07, 08, 09, 0A, 0B, 0C, 0D, 0E, 0F for what you know as 0-15, and then the next number, which is 16, reads as 10. Following the logic, the number after 9F would be A0, then A1, A2, and so forth. The stock opacity setting is FF, which, is maximum or totally solid. Mine is 3F, which is probably about 20% or so. Olham's 6F would be somewhere around 40-45%.

 

Personally, I don't believe that being able to translate the hexi-decimals into base ten is as important for customizing the labels as is getting a grasp on the sequence. I hope this helps.