Cutting excessive padlock-targeting range

[33LIMA 972]

Two things I want to do, but can't work out how/if they are possible.

 

First, I want to reduce the range that you can padlock a target. At the moment, I have the red box and red cone turned off, which I like. But at the moment, I can hit 'Next air tgt' and if I'm in padlock, I get a view of the sky (or the ground) where he is, but he's still too far away to be seen, not so much as a speck. So, I can spot and padlock targets beyond visual range. Not good. I want to reduce this so that when I do this, I can see at least the speck in the sky. RB3D worked this way, and it was a good way of simulating the scanning of the sky (by you AND you wingies) and compensating for the limitations of a PC/monitor (with or without TrackIR; I'm without). In RB3D, when you could padlock the tgt, you looked and the speck WAS there. That's what I want. I want to reduce the padlock range, down to the range you can actually really see the b***ers.

 

I hope that if that is possible, it might also reduce the range in the inflight map, where you can see the friendly & enemy plane icons. At the moment, this is also too long, giving a sort of AWACS effect, ok for the modern era or even WW2 with a radar and IFF-equipped Ground Controller, but not for WW1. At the moment I have turned the plane icons off but would turn them back on if I could reduce the range they appeared to the range a pilot could make them out as speck in real life. And replace the enemy/friendly ones with a generic plane.

 

Second, I want to stop the instant target ID that pops up in white text, bottom centre of the screen, when you padlock something. I already have the red target ID panel turned off, as it's just too unrealistic for a WW1 sim, even as compensation for the aforementioned PC/monitor limitations. When I target something, I don't want it to be identified. If I can't supress the displayed message altogether, I want to replace it with "Possible Hostile Aircraft targeted" rather than "SE5a targeted" (Can't use Bogey/Bandit, those are WW2 terms!).

 

Together, I think these changes would make FE more realistic by making the padlock/targeting feature a much better proxy for you and your flight's scanning of the skies. Now, they are too AWACS-like.

 

Anyone tried this or know where to look for such settings?

 

PS just realised from my manual that setting HUD display to 'Hard' might achieve my second objective, will give that a whirl.

Edited April 14, 2011 by 33LIMA

[+streakeagle 866]

Actually, the padlock helps you spot targets within visual range that you can't see because the monitor doesn't have enough resolution to render. Most games render long range targets larger than they should be so that you can see them or at least put a very visible black dot to help you see out to the range you could in real life. Third Wire sims don't render anything less than half a pixel in size (i.e. round down), so the only way you can spot out to the limits of human vision is to use the visual targeting keys. There is a visual spotting distance that determines whether you can "detect" and padlock visual targets, possibly a global one and/or per aircraft one. The ideal solution is to use a monitor with a large enough resolution to show 1 pixel at the limits of human vision. I don't know what resolution that is, but I know it is not 1600x1200. A work around is to not use targeting at all... don't hit the T key and don't padlock. Use track IR and zoom in to increase resolution. It is very difficult (unrealistically so), but does teach what real people doing visual searches have to do: focus at small distant areas and slowly scan the sky using patterns not unlike radar searches. But it does completely take away your peripheral vision.

[33LIMA 972]

Actually, the padlock helps you spot targets within visual range that you can't see because the monitor doesn't have enough resolution to render. Most games render long range targets larger than they should be so that you can see them or at least put a very visible black dot to help you see out to the range you could in real life. Third Wire sims don't render anything less than half a pixel in size (i.e. round down), so the only way you can spot out to the limits of human vision is to use the visual targeting keys. There is a visual spotting distance that determines whether you can "detect" and padlock visual targets, possibly a global one and/or per aircraft one. The ideal solution is to use a monitor with a large enough resolution to show 1 pixel at the limits of human vision. I don't know what resolution that is, but I know it is not 1600x1200. A work around is to not use targeting at all... don't hit the T key and don't padlock. Use track IR and zoom in to increase resolution. It is very difficult (unrealistically so), but does teach what real people doing visual searches have to do: focus at small distant areas and slowly scan the sky using patterns not unlike radar searches. But it does completely take away your peripheral vision.

 

Thanks for that; I did suspect that the padlockable-targets were not 'really' BVR and that is was the resolution thing. But I might still have preferred the max padlock range to be the one at which the sim can visibly render the target, in whatever form it does. Even if that gives my pilot inferior eyesight to the AI.

 

Glad to hear that the padlock is at least limited to a somewhat realistic range-of-vision, so I now know that it is not letting me see things that I would generally not be able to see in real life, albeit you have to get closer to see even the 'speck'.

 

So I remain reasonably happy with using the padlock/targeting system as compensation for the limits of sim-ing, which even with all the bells and TrackIR whistles is still a way short of replicating real-life situational awareness.

 

If, as seems likely, the inflight map plane icons become visible according to the same visibility range rules, I may restore them, but if so, I will use a single plane symbol for both sides, so as to prevent it providing too-easy IFF.

 

Re the second point, I still get the pesky 'SE5a targeted' text showing up even with the HUD at 'Hard', so I'm off now to see if I can find out where that lives and kill or cripple it.

Edited April 14, 2011 by 33LIMA

[+streakeagle 866]

I used to kill the text in the jet games... but it kills all messages. In the jet games, some status messages are things that you would easily know in real life, like what positions the flaps and speed brakes are in. Without such messages, it was a lot more difficult, i.e. accidently flying around with the speed brake deployed for awhile. But I can see in the WWI era, there are far less messages that you should have, if any at all. The file you seek is the huddata.ini which has to be extracted from the flightdata.cat file and put into the flight folder of FE, or create a flight folder in the mod folder for FE2. Among the things defined in that file is the location and font of the text. There are various ways to change that file to get what you want (my way was to move the text off screen, others had different and maybe better ways which I am sure can be found in the SFP1 knowledgebase somewhere). If you don't like the results, just delete the file to go back to system defaults.

[Stingray72 6]

The planes have landing gear indicators, and for flaps and boards I'll tap the buttons to make sure. If you're going fast enough then the flaps won't be a problem anyways since there on limits as to when you can deploy them speed wise. Having the messages off sure makes for better immersion, you have to pay attention to the radio calls now lol. Love it!!

[Grinseed 19]

33Lima, I have been following your quest with interest. Hope I havent spoiled your fun, but one way to remove the text from the middle of the screen, ie the message texts, is to edit the MESSAGESYSTEM.ini in the Flight folder.

 

MESSAGESYSTEM.INI

 

[MessageWindow]

;BackgroundImage=TextBackground.tga <--- edit with ;

;TopLeftPosition=0.22,0.8 <---

;BottomRightPosition=0.78,0.985 <---

;VerticalBorder=0.0015 <---

;HorizontalBorder=0.008 <---

 

No text at all on screen in game and only the edited map to go by. It makes for interesting sport. I hope this works for you.

 

Thanks for sharing your enthusiasm, I might not otherwise have bothered looking.

 

Cheers Grinseed

[33LIMA 972]

33Lima, I have been following your quest with interest. Hope I havent spoiled your fun, but one way to remove the text from the middle of the screen, ie the message texts, is to edit the MESSAGESYSTEM.ini in the Flight folder.

 

MESSAGESYSTEM.INI

 

[MessageWindow]

;BackgroundImage=TextBackground.tga <--- edit with ;

;TopLeftPosition=0.22,0.8 <---

;BottomRightPosition=0.78,0.985 <---

;VerticalBorder=0.0015 <---

;HorizontalBorder=0.008 <---

 

No text at all on screen in game and only the edited map to go by. It makes for interesting sport. I hope this works for you.

 

Thanks for sharing your enthusiasm, I might not otherwise have bothered looking.

 

Cheers Grinseed

 

That's brilliant - I'd been fiddling around in all sorts of files looking for that and had about given up! Thank you! Will try it now.

 

As for enthusiasm, yes I'm thoroughly enjoying FE already; got it when it first came out but as an RB3D fan, I wasn't massively impressed, with the nice but slightly 'artificial' graphics, or the FM, AI, campaigns or damage modelling (doesn't leave a lot, does it) but with the latest patches it is transformed - it's still the same sim at heart of course but looks, plays and feels so much better, and that's before you add any of the many excellent mods or tinker with anything.

 

Apart from ROF's rather shiny ones, the FE planes are about the best I've seen in any sim, outside and in, thanks to great 3d models, excellent skins, authentic and varied markings (the decals look so much better than IL2s), dynamic lighting and animated parts and pilots. And you don't need a super computer or an expensive upgrade to see it.

 

Though some railyards and other ground targets besides airfeilds would be nice, FE's WW1 terrain and environment is immersive and rather beautiful, thanks to the lighting, subtle fog effects and exceptionally well-rendered towns and villages, roads and rivers. I still have my old WW1 maps somewhere from Rowan's Flying Corps and I'm gonna see if I can use them to navigate and identify the smaller towns and villages i'm flying over in-game; the larger towns like Cambrai and St Quentin seem to be in the right places and TW have obviously done a good deal of research into the names and locations of the real old WW1 airfields, something many sim players who aren't WW1 aviation buffs may not appreciate.

 

Overall, I reckon FE has a strong claim to being the best WW1 flight sim; OFF and RoF may have some stronger points but FE has some of its own and overall, can hold its own with the best of them. Once I get my new graphics card next month if not sooner, I'll be picking up FE2 which seems to look and run better still on Vista. With the patches, FE is already hard to beat.

 

Anyone who gave up on FE because of the lukewarm reception it got on release, is missing a real treat. Think I'll post something to that effect over on SimHQ; I get the impression that, even allowing for folk who write off FE because they can't fiddle with mixture settings, many tend to judge FE from it's release state and the original reviews, and would be pleasanly surprised if they took a fresh look at it, in its current form.

 

Thanks again!

Edited April 16, 2011 by 33LIMA