It would be nice to see things from a higher altitude perspective without actually zooming out. It is nice to be able to zoom out but when in this mode the units decrease relative in size and it gets difficult to see the nice unit detail. I'd love to be able to see zoomed basically, only with the same normal size perspective of units, so that units/effects behind the camera now are more easily viewed.
As it is now the altitude limit is practically infinite but the useable threshold seems to be around 1000. If there was a way to squish the Z-plane of our view then we could do some really neat stuff to more fully enjoy the 3rd dimension in our view window. I don't want to squish the Z-plane when drawing units, just their relative position within the view window.
Truncated Z-View
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Truncated Z-View
Last edited by MadRat on 02 Jun 2007, 17:39, edited 1 time in total.
It is not exactly a paradox, but it won't work very well, I'm sorry to say. If FOV is non-constant, and decreases with distance, instead of what I think you're hoping for (viewing a smaller overall area at X detail level), instead, two things will happen:
1. The change in FOV angle will change all of the drawing values, gradually resulting in greater and greater warping of the scene's geometry, which is supposed to be drawn from a fixed perspective.
2. Eventually, you'll end up with warping effects raising the geometry of the map so much, you wouldn't be able to see the units.
Basically, the idea won't work. However, I get what you want- you'd like units to get larger smoothly with the camera's distance, so that you can see 'em while they're fighting.
However, that won't work very well, either. Because, at some point or another, they're going to clip into each other all of the time. Don't believe me? Play with icons on, in a mod that supports them. Set IconDistance really low, and zoom out, and watch the icons pile up one another, even with units that are fairly far apart, in game units. For Icons, Trepan was cool enough to give us designers a method to adjust the amount of scaling, so we can make this work OK. And I'm sure, with LUA, that something could be done with Units as well. However, it'd present an extremely distorted view of what's happening- once you'd zoomed out enough, units would be dodging trees and obstacles you couldn't see, their movements would be exaggerated, etc. I guess what I'm really saying is that if you're having problems with zoom... turn your resolution up
1. The change in FOV angle will change all of the drawing values, gradually resulting in greater and greater warping of the scene's geometry, which is supposed to be drawn from a fixed perspective.
2. Eventually, you'll end up with warping effects raising the geometry of the map so much, you wouldn't be able to see the units.
Basically, the idea won't work. However, I get what you want- you'd like units to get larger smoothly with the camera's distance, so that you can see 'em while they're fighting.
However, that won't work very well, either. Because, at some point or another, they're going to clip into each other all of the time. Don't believe me? Play with icons on, in a mod that supports them. Set IconDistance really low, and zoom out, and watch the icons pile up one another, even with units that are fairly far apart, in game units. For Icons, Trepan was cool enough to give us designers a method to adjust the amount of scaling, so we can make this work OK. And I'm sure, with LUA, that something could be done with Units as well. However, it'd present an extremely distorted view of what's happening- once you'd zoomed out enough, units would be dodging trees and obstacles you couldn't see, their movements would be exaggerated, etc. I guess what I'm really saying is that if you're having problems with zoom... turn your resolution up
1. It was not I that added unit icon scaling. I did add:
- mouse icons for commands, with scaling
- optional user control over unit icons, with a lua tie-in
2. Current SVN lua can be used to render units at a larger size:
- gl.Unit(unitID) with appropriate transformation
- Spring.SetUnitNoDraw() -- LuaRules
- mouse icons for commands, with scaling
- optional user control over unit icons, with a lua tie-in
2. Current SVN lua can be used to render units at a larger size:
- gl.Unit(unitID) with appropriate transformation
- Spring.SetUnitNoDraw() -- LuaRules
Yeah.
He's not asking for fish-eyes, Argh. But to the contrary just for a view where the camera is far but zoomed. So that nukes clouds and planes don't blot out the whole screen.
He's not asking for fish-eyes, Argh. But to the contrary just for a view where the camera is far but zoomed. So that nukes clouds and planes don't blot out the whole screen.
WTF? How could the way you view them affect the behavior of units?they're going to clip into each other all of the time
....
once you'd zoomed out enough, units would be dodging trees and obstacles you couldn't see, their movements would be exaggerated, etc
Basically I'm looking for a way to view units that are higher in altitude without having to zoom out on the map. Zooming out shrinks everything, even the units at higher altitudes. Units closer to the camera should be larger but with the current drawing system they are not, so in a sense the view is already distorted. A fish-eyed lenses approach might be what would fix that, but that would probably be unplayable. (Considering field of views over 100 make games like Quake 3 terribly difficult to play.) I was - in plain terms - requesting a zoomed look workaround that did not include so much shrinking all of the units as the camera zoomed out. A configurable fov variable would be nice to play with but probably too extreme to incorporate.
Now this si fine if your at a fixed zoom level because you can use an orthogonal view, like OTA where units are the same size onscreen regardless of their altitude.
But when you zoom out things get smaller. Thats a fundamental aspect of imagery once you move into 2 or higher dimensions. Zooming out wont help there unless your viewport gets larger (aka your monitor).
Here the solution is not messing with the games perspective and possibly causing horrible distortions that make the player loose track of positions due to a lack of coherence between what they see and the way the brain works.
For example, a troop of 20 peewees, when zoomed out turn into a blob fileld with dots with a main icon or flag identifying them as 20 peewees. Think bw2.
Otherwise if its just high up aircraft then an orthogonal view would work.
But when you zoom out things get smaller. Thats a fundamental aspect of imagery once you move into 2 or higher dimensions. Zooming out wont help there unless your viewport gets larger (aka your monitor).
Here the solution is not messing with the games perspective and possibly causing horrible distortions that make the player loose track of positions due to a lack of coherence between what they see and the way the brain works.
For example, a troop of 20 peewees, when zoomed out turn into a blob fileld with dots with a main icon or flag identifying them as 20 peewees. Think bw2.
Otherwise if its just high up aircraft then an orthogonal view would work.
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1v0ry_k1ng
- Posts: 4656
- Joined: 10 Mar 2006, 10:24
It's not useless. It benefit is it would help open up the ability to see units as they move in the 3rd dimension, height. When you look through the first person view units in the distance are small while units close are big. This is not true as you zoom out, all units now scale down as one zooms out.
What might work to make air units easier to manage would be a way only to view certain unit categories on the map at any one time. (Like having a simple checklist where its possible to view air units but say hide land and sea units with a simple couple of clicks in their respective check boxes.) Only thing is this checklist solution doesn't help to see the unit detail whereas a truncated view would.
What might work to make air units easier to manage would be a way only to view certain unit categories on the map at any one time. (Like having a simple checklist where its possible to view air units but say hide land and sea units with a simple couple of clicks in their respective check boxes.) Only thing is this checklist solution doesn't help to see the unit detail whereas a truncated view would.
mad rat, two things:
as you zoom out units dont get smaller as they get higher because your zoomed out, they do get closer as they get higher up the difference is that either aircraft arent high up enough or your zoomed out to far, but mostly because the likelihood a unit is close drops dramatically.
What you want is an orthogonal view. Aka where obejcts are drawn without perspective, a peewee next to the camera is just as large onscreen as on 2 million pixels away. Things will look somewhat strange at times especially when viewed at an angle other than top down.
as you zoom out units dont get smaller as they get higher because your zoomed out, they do get closer as they get higher up the difference is that either aircraft arent high up enough or your zoomed out to far, but mostly because the likelihood a unit is close drops dramatically.
What you want is an orthogonal view. Aka where obejcts are drawn without perspective, a peewee next to the camera is just as large onscreen as on 2 million pixels away. Things will look somewhat strange at times especially when viewed at an angle other than top down.