The Dynamic Cockpit Project

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Re: The Dynamic Cockpit Project

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Darksaber
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Post by Darksaber » Wed Aug 14, 2019 3:10 pm

Why on earth would you want to include Hud elements on interior of the [Craftname]Exterior.opt, it as bad a suggestion as Hud elements on the actual exterior of a craft, you don't get that close to the exterior to see the interior for this to be a viable proposition, it would be a pointless exercise.

Cockpit yes, Gunner perhaps, but Exterior well...... no! lol

Regarding the Tie Cockpits, I removed the Radar screens, because I pulled everything forward so you could see better through the cockpit window, as before the view was very limited and even I used to turn off the cockpit. Since the radar screens where now out of sight, I removed them, to be honest I don't see the point in re-adding them as they are going to be way above your eyeline, and when your flying the ties you don't want to be pressing keyboard buttons just to see where your target is.

This Dynamic Cockpit project is a great idea, I can see it's benefits and it's disadvantages, it benefits you if you have these goggle things and you wish to look around, but for a static cockpit I don't really see the point of it, sorry. I doubt very much I going to spend £300-£400 on a set of these goggle just to look at a few craft, to be honest I haven't really played the game for years, I build opts, I make sure they work in game, usually in skirmish, that's it.
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ual002
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Post by ual002 » Wed Aug 14, 2019 3:56 pm

Right, DS, that's fair. For me, I've had track IR for years and breathing new life into the most used cockpits seems like a great way to keep things fresh and modern. As long as the static, forward facing boys have a good solid classic HUD overlay, whats the worst we get from this? A hook that allows us to move the HUD overlay elements around? Some fancy cockpits with activity going on in them behind your HUD? Yes its gonna be labor intensive, but in the end I think the labor is worth the effort.

I do however fully disagree with you with animations on exteriors. Animating any part of any ship may potentially be useful. Scrolling billboards, Running lights, blinking strobes, think outside the box, there are plenty of "potential" uses. Not necessarily game changing, but exploring ideas is what its all about. The effort could potentially peter out, but we may have learned something along the way useful later on. For example, we might be able to animate some strobes for the wings of the lambda, just simply by varying the intensity of the white in that part of the texture. It might be stupid but I think that sort of experiment is what makes this game fun.
Last edited by ual002 on Wed Aug 14, 2019 4:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Darksaber
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Post by Darksaber » Wed Aug 14, 2019 4:07 pm

No, I think you misunderstood, I may have misunderstood, but the way I read Driftwoods post was that he wanted Hud Elements adding to the interior cockpit of the [CraftName]Exterior.opt craft. I see this as pointless.

Animated textures on craft such as the hangar and the other stuff you suggested then yes I see the use of it.
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Post by ual002 » Wed Aug 14, 2019 4:17 pm

I think he meant it in jest. As a sort of extreme example of what was possible.
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Driftwood
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Post by Driftwood » Wed Aug 14, 2019 5:01 pm

Nope, I was thinking it'd be a way to overlay the HUD projection we see by default to enable 3rd person combat flying, and maybe a way to orient the camera to be automatically moved to a position just slightly above and behind the exterior model. There would be no texture edits.

It would give more function beyond cosmetic for the high detail exteriors that only get used by the player in cosmetic sense for screen captures only as it stands.

I figure if its possible and works well, we may as well add it if it's not too difficult on bluemax.

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Post by keiranhalcyon7 » Wed Aug 14, 2019 5:15 pm

Darksaber wrote:
Wed Aug 14, 2019 3:10 pm
but for a static cockpit I don't really see the point of it, sorry.
My hope was that most of the cockpit authors would be willing to retool their cockpits to facilitate displaying all the gauges legibly in the fixed forward view (at 1080p, for some standard agreed-upon fov). But maybe that's a pipe dream.
Driftwood wrote:
Wed Aug 14, 2019 5:01 pm
Nope, I was thinking it'd be a way to overlay the HUD projection we see by default to enable 3rd person combat flying
Forcing the HUD on in exterior camera mode sounds like a plausible thing an independent hook could do. I've thought about such a flight mode myself.

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Post by Darksaber » Wed Aug 14, 2019 5:44 pm

keiranhalcyon7 wrote:
Wed Aug 14, 2019 5:15 pm
My hope was that most of the cockpit authors would be willing to retool their cockpits to facilitate displaying all the gauges legibly in the fixed forward view (at 1080p, for some standard agreed-upon fov). But maybe that's a pipe dream.
Well you got that wrong then, didn't you!
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Post by keiranhalcyon7 » Wed Aug 14, 2019 11:27 pm

Darksaber wrote:
Wed Aug 14, 2019 5:44 pm
keiranhalcyon7 wrote:
Wed Aug 14, 2019 5:15 pm
My hope was that most of the cockpit authors would be willing to retool their cockpits to facilitate displaying all the gauges legibly in the fixed forward view (at 1080p, for some standard agreed-upon fov). But maybe that's a pipe dream.
Well you got that wrong then, didn't you!
Did I hallucinate these replies, then?
General_Trageton wrote:
Mon Jul 15, 2019 9:27 am
I feel a sudden urge to rework all my fighter and shuttle models ...
Driftwood wrote:
Mon Jul 15, 2019 8:59 pm
...if the bugs get worked out, I could see wanting to impliment this in mine.

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Darksaber
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Post by Darksaber » Thu Aug 15, 2019 3:25 am

Your nick picking, you replied to something I posted! But you continue..........
“You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time”.”
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Vince T
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Post by Vince T » Thu Aug 15, 2019 4:49 am

I'd lilke to point out that just because I feel an urge to do something doesn‘t mean I‘m going to do it right away and be done wwith it within the next 10 minutes. Seeing how long they took me to create in the first time I won't just rush in and redo everything in a matter of days. I play on quality not quantity.

Many of my flyable craaft (about a dozen) I have in revision and I‘m likely to include this feature as I get to them. This will take time and I'm not planning on batch-rereleaseing their current state just to include the updated textures

Plus me being interested in redoing my stuff doesn‘t make it mandatory for other authors.
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Post by keiranhalcyon7 » Thu Aug 15, 2019 8:06 am

Yes, of course. My apologies; I didn't mean to make you, or Driftwood, or anyone else feel nagged.

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Post by blue_max » Thu Aug 15, 2019 8:21 am

Alright, here's the next release of the Dynamic Cockpit project:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/rocq54txcbs99 ... 3.zip?dl=0

In this release:
* Coordinates are resolution-independent. They should just work.
* The specification for HUD element placement has been greatly simplified.
* There's one config file per cockpit.
* HUD regions can be scaled and moved around (this is done in the dynamic_cockpit.cfg file, which now stores global settings only).

I'll go back to your questions later guys. Thanks for your interest and support!

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Post by blue_max » Fri Aug 16, 2019 3:36 am

OK, let's see. There were a few of comments here. Let me see if I can address all of them:

* TIE-Fighter cockpit: I'm just proposing an idea of how it might look. I'm actually interested in finding the previous cockpits to see how they look; but since these elements were removed for a good reason, maybe we need a different solution here. Also, having the targeting computer in the yoke isn't that great in 6dof because you have to bend over constantly and that's uncomfortable. So, as I said, consider it more a proof of concept. A real solution would involve modifying the meshes.

* I think animations can be done. The easiest implementation would be a series of images that get loaded and iterated. But we would want to limit the number of frames. The other option would be to provide MPGs or similar formats; but I would have to do some research to figure out how to load that in DirectX.

* I think, technically, this would work for exterior OPTs; but they would look kind of tiny, so I'm not sure they would be useful. I'm assuming that we would want to apply the HUD elements inside the cockpit while the camera floats outside... unless I totally missed the point here (considering that I only learned about "exterior" OPTs *yesterday* -- literally -- then there's a high probability that I missed the point here).

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Post by Driftwood » Fri Aug 16, 2019 4:54 am

I'll post a mock up of what I intend by 3rd person exterior hud concept tomorrow after work..

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Post by DTM » Sat Aug 17, 2019 5:16 pm

I really have so many ideas of how simple animations projected on textures could be used ...

As regards the modification of existing cockpits: I would not exclude it. But it takes patience. You will have to wait....and wait....

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Post by DTM » Sun Aug 18, 2019 11:44 am

I was not able to test the preview of the Dynamic cockpit (v.1.0.3) ...maybe I missed something…
1. Copy all files in the XWingalliance directory
2. Disable 32 bit hook
3. Enabled TrackIR in the cockpitlook.cfg (It works perfectly, thank you!!!!!!!!!)
4. Launch the game
...but the dynamic cockpit does not work...have I missed something? Do I have to activate it from somewhere?
I tryed with the Assault Gunboat and with the Y-Wing (XWAUP test version)... :?

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Post by ual002 » Sun Aug 18, 2019 5:49 pm

I was able to get the dynamic cockpit to work. Amazing job Blue_Max. This is an amazing feat.

Couple of things to point out.

1. With everything installed my frontend animations are all 2 or 3x speed. ddraw.dll related?
2. There are some obvious glitches to work out, I'm not going to waste too much time pointing this out as it is more a tech demo than anything. There are just a couple things to note.
- Seems that the Assault gunboat has double front radar screens.
3. Without 6dof in track IR, it is indeed difficult to se a lot of the screens.
4. I am unsure but if there is a way to enable and position/scale control the overlay HUD elements yet. Admittedly wasn't able to closely follow recent developments in this thread.
-EDIT: Never mind I found the answer to number 4.
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Post by ual002 » Sun Aug 18, 2019 7:06 pm

This tech allows me to use 3 monitors, TrackIR and Modified HUD elements. While technically possible, the framerate jitters rendering 5760 x 1080 when theres a lot of stuff on the screen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqkZvX3 ... e=youtu.be

I can however render just to the center screen, the flanking monitors left blank, save for oversized radar screens as well. I still seem to have some stuttering though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dS7JVdk ... e=youtu.be

If you have 3 monitors at home, be sure to go full screen in youtube to get the desired effect.


My conclusion is, that even if the live dynamic cockpit isn't your thing, You can use secondary or flanking monitors to place your HUD elements in the empty black space and clean up your center cockpit view. Larger CMD and radar screens, Shield and Laser power settings scaled large and visibly on the sides so. And if your really went nuts and build a sim cockpit like some of the serious simmers do, you could potentially have several smaller monitors rendering separate HUD elements. Some things would have to be tweaked about how you chose what screen to render the game and mini monitors on but, it is technically possible.

In effect you could build, say a TIE fighter cockpit at home, then render the game in the main front facing monitor, turn off the 3d cockpit, then send all your little HUD elements to several little screens all over your cockpit.
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Post by blue_max » Sun Aug 18, 2019 7:29 pm

@DTM: Yes, you need to set "dynamic_cockpit_enabled = 1" in dynamic_cockpit.cfg. Sorry I may have missed specifying that in the readme. I'll check.

@ual002: Animations are probably playing at 60fps, you need to set "concourse_animations_at_25fps = 1" in vrparams.cfg.

I know there are a few glitches; but I thought the Assault Gunboat was OK. Well, that's easy to fix in its configuration file. It would probably help if you pointed out other errors (maybe through PM?)

Yes, the DC elements are not quite visible in the standard forward-looking view. We're going to have to update them slowly.

BTW, I'm converting my version of ddraw into 32-bit mode. It's working kind of OK now; but I want to fix a few things before releasing it (like the laser brightness).

Thanks for your feedback, I appreciate it!

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ual002
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Post by ual002 » Sun Aug 18, 2019 9:53 pm

Excellent news about the 32 bit hook. I'm already clearly spoiled by my 32 bit backdrops.
I'll go over the the rest of the cockpits and report any issues via PM a little later.

Also, "concourse_animations_at_25fps = 1" in vrparams.cfg didn't seem to work. I'm wondering if I somehow have an older version.
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Post by blue_max » Mon Aug 19, 2019 1:11 am

Thanks ual002, btw the performance drop may also happen with the regular ddraw.

For the faster animations try disabling the time hook too

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ual002
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Post by ual002 » Wed Aug 21, 2019 5:36 pm

Can confirm, Hook_Time removal restored the frontend framerate but caused all sorts of HUD issues later.

Something is however causing an exceptionally slow frame rate in the hangar sequence though. Unsure if related.
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Post by blue_max » Thu Aug 22, 2019 3:19 am

Thanks for reporting this, ual002. Yes, removing the time hook makes things unusually slow when launching at the hangar and also introduces some corruption in the cockpit. It never occurred to me to test this. I have no idea why the time hook is interacting with the dynamic cockpit like this... I'll investigate it.

BTW, with the time hook you can reach framerates beyond the regular 60; but this shouldn't be happening anyway.

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Post by blue_max » Tue Aug 27, 2019 5:17 am

I believe I've fixed all the corruption problems in the cockpit and it's now working in 32-bit mode too. However, I don't know why it's so slow in the hangar and shortly afterward. I checked if there were more DC commands being rendered; but this isn't the case. There are essentially no more draw() calls than there should be; and the DC commands go down to 0 when the camera is outside the cockpit -- as expected -- but this is when the hangar is at the slowest! The only thing I noticed was that quitting the mission soon after it starts and re-starting it makes the problem go away. So maybe it's a cache problem? I haven't noticed any slowdowns when in Skirmish mode, so I guess something is happening in the hangar that causes the drop in performance. I need to investigate this further.

Anyway, I'll release the 32-bit version of the DC soon.

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Post by Driftwood » Mon Sep 02, 2019 3:31 pm

So I'm going to start tinkering with this, but before I do having just updated my Track IR hook, and seeing this uses the same api file, should I wait for the next release to start? I don't want to goof up my install at this point.

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