Making distance to scale

Dyer |3-5| · Post by **Dyer |3-5|** » 2007-03-27 17:29

By now we have all heard, or made, complaints about how in RL this gun could shoot this far, this bomb would have this blast radius, and this plane could fly this high going this speed. It is obvious although PR is attempting to achieve as much realism as possible, it is NOT possible to create true-to-life physics in the game. Computers, as of now, cannot handle this kind of stress.

Since it is not possible to have the game and physics scaled to real world, why not create an actual distance scale that could be applied to most, if not all, of the aspects of the game that involve distance. By this I mean that if a plane can fly X number of feet high going going X number of feet per second, why not make them to the same scale. So if it can fly 10,000 feet high and go 5000 feet per second in RL, make it go 5000 feet high, and 2500 feet per second in the game (I used these numbers to make it easy to understand and calculate, I know that they are no where near accurate)

The scale used to calculate those could then be applied to the rest of game, i.e.: Distance weapons are accuate to, bullet drop, speed of vehicles and rockets, sprint distance, and possibly view distance. Then, although not true-to-life, the characteristics would be scaled to each other making them as realistic as possible given modern day technology.

causticbeat · Post by **causticbeat** » 2007-03-27 18:24

Off topic, but it has to do with scaling and stuff in game.

Ive been thinking, and would it be possible to make a working svd scope rangefinder?

http://www.impactguns.com/store/media/r ... _1000m.jpg

like to get each line (200m, 400, 600, etc etc) have a troop stand out that far (measure with move command) and then take a screenshot. Using the height couldnt you just resize the rangefinder to work with PR?

then you could adjust the chevrons so each chevron is whatever it is IRL for bullet drop

honestly, it would be great fun and i think a cool thing to show off about the mod... would add some depth to sniping (find range with rangefinder, then shoot from the correct chevron)

would be neat....

jerkzilla · Post by **jerkzilla** » 2007-03-27 18:39

Well, if we'll ever have 1000m view distances, then it would really be cool (and hard) to snipe with bullet drop and bullet travel time, heck, maybe even wind if it's possible...
About scaling stuff down... I don't thinks thats a good idea, I mean some of the stuff in game is good as it is...

Dyer |3-5| · Post by **Dyer |3-5|** » 2007-03-27 18:43

Im not talking about making the game any smaller, I'm saying make everything in the game to the SAME scale. Distances/Altitudes in the game are already smaller, thats the way it is, but why have one distance be .5 of what it is in RL, and another .3 of the actual distance. If everything was set to an equal scale it would be much more like real world physics. It wouldnt matter that the plane could only fly [_____ft] high because all other distances would be set to the same scale.

El_Vikingo · Post by **El_Vikingo** » 2007-03-27 18:52

Tried flying a jet at 1250km/h in a 4km^2?

Me neither.

Dyer |3-5| · Post by **Dyer |3-5|** » 2007-03-27 19:00

El_Vikingo wrote:Tried flying a jet at 1250km/h in a 4km^2?

Me neither.

Exactly, its impossible b/c the map size has been scaled down. But if we took the area needed for operational use of a jet traveling at that speed, and then used the same scale for the speed as the one used for the distance, it would make alot more sense then having the distance be much, much smaller and the jet traveling at near the same speed it would IRL

causticbeat · Post by **causticbeat** » 2007-03-27 19:02

nah, id rather see things be closer to realistic physics in a smaller operation area. With jets, unless you were to have like 100km maps stuff will be kinda touchy, but within the bf2 engine you can get pretty comfortable distance wise for tanks and infantry

Clypp · Post by **Clypp** » 2007-03-27 19:51

The tradeoff will be more map area and view distance for lower polycount and a ton of work.

Everything is relative so this could work in theory except for hardcorded objects, actions and the like. The game might start to look like **** though because you will have to drop polys.

Interesting, original idea.

Dyer |3-5| · Post by **Dyer |3-5|** » 2007-03-27 19:54

Clypp wrote:The tradeoff will be more map area and view distance for lower polycount and a ton of work.

Everything is relative so this could work in theory except for hardcorded objects, actions and the like. The game might start to look like **** though because you will have to drop polys.

Interesting, original idea.

True it would be some work, but I was thinking more in terms of distances and speeds of vehicles, not objects. Thank you though.

Post by **eggman** » 2007-03-27 20:09

What we are striving for is to make things behave / perform as realistically as possible. There are obvious engine limitations in terms of physics modelling fidelity, and terrain size that causes problems there, the most obvious of which is with Jets and, to a lesser degree, helicopters.

Additionally there is just the pure "black art" aspects of tweaking vehicles in BF2... it's rather arcane and very time consuming.

I'd rather see how things behave in 4km maps with 800m view distance than neuter everything down to a foggy Karkand shoe box dynamic.

Sneak Attack · Post by **Sneak Attack** » 2007-03-28 01:30

'[R-DEV wrote:eggman']
I'd rather see how things behave in 4km maps with 800m view distance than neuter everything down to a foggy Karkand shoe box dynamic.

except it wouldnt feel like that because it would all be to scale, when you walk into a city your not like, jesus, i cant see shit, its so tiny. its all relative so it would feel natural.

making vehicles realistic but map sizes un realistic makes for a goofy outcome.

2+3 doesnt equal 2.

WNxKenwayy · Post by **WNxKenwayy** » 2007-03-28 04:28

You can't chance the scale problem. 50m in real life is not 50m in game, period. Wont happen, ever. Never seen a game that properly shows scale, probably never will because it'd be a lot slower pace than most people want.

Post by **eggman** » 2007-03-28 04:51

Sneak Attack wrote:2+3 doesnt equal 2.

orly?

try this on .. 2 + 2 = 4x Al Basrah square area

Sneak Attack wrote: making vehicles realistic but map sizes un realistic makes for a goofy outcome.

We're not exactly modelling the drive from Kuwait to Baghdad .. what we're modelling - for entertainment purposes - is the sharp end of two opposing forces meeting in a hostile engagement.

You can do a lot with realistic velocities in ~17 sq km of terrain, which we're working toward (we have a map that size in testing now and it's going fairly well).

The typical ~4.2 sq km maps (Al Basrah, Oman, Zatar, etc) are decently suited to mechanised infantry engagements. Anything smaller than that should really just be Infantry and Jeeps and realistic velocities work OK there.

Because we want to have combined arms represented in PR, we're stuffing way too much gear into the 2km maps. But when we (hopefully) have maps with 4x that combat area and decent view ranges, I think things will play out quite decently with as close to a realistic scale as we can get it (applied to all elements wherever possible).

And yeah it's all an experiment to see how much realism we can infuse into BF2 and still keep it playable and fun. So rather than capitulate and define an arbitrary scaling factor, we're trying to stretch the engine to do things like ~4km maps (~17 sq km) and 800m engagement ranges.