Project Reality Forums

MRADs on binoculars
(TL/DR: see third picture; says it all.)
I was playing on Lashkar Valley when I descided that I'd finally use my binoculars to range a target for a fellow grenadier squad mate.
Target height (including boots and helmet); say 1.8 meters. About 5 milliradians high. 1,8 m/5 MRADs = 0,36 km. That was some useless shit I got there. Looking at the map the target was rather 550m+ away.

Test set-up
So I went to a local server to have a look at it and give some feedback to the developers. On the map "TEST AIRFIELD" (which has great view distance BTW) I placed an Avenger HMMWV and Stormer (AAV) in front of each other, leaving exactly 10 meters from the front of the HMMWV to the back of the AAV using 'squad leader 3D markers' (like 'build').

After that I moved 1000 meters, 90 degrees off the vehicles to look at them with binoculars. Distance is measured from the map using grid lines and not the 50-meter-interval SL-marks. Standing there, looking west and lining the coordinate system up with the vehicles; this is what I saw.

Back-ground
Just briefly going over what that big numbery thingy shows, so we are on the same page, without going too much into what milli-radians (MRADs) are. The numbers represent *10 MRADs. So the upper-most number means 70 MRADs, and the bunker is about 40 MRADs left of the Hesco compound.
1 MRAD, 1000 meters away represent 1 meter. (That's what it's based on) 10 MRADs (like from 0 to 1 in the binoculars) should be 10 meters.

The issue
That is clearly not the case with these binoculars. In fact, this shows that the vehicles are 590 m away while they're actually 1000 m away.
The yellow line represent 10 actual meters in-game. The blue line which should be 10 MRADs, should line up perfectly with the yellow line. To make this coordinate system work, the coordinate system needs to be scaled up. By mesuring a bit I think there might just be room for it on the screen.
An alternative is to decrease the zoom (but I love this amazing zoom). That will also be a harder way to solve the problem I think.
I mesured that; to make the blue line match the yellow, you'd have to increase the horizontal scale's length by a factor 1.77. However note the red lines which indicate that, the distance between the coordinate-lines are not persistent from 0-1 and 1-2; so the whole picture should not just be scaled up.

Thoughts I made, should you decide to scale up the overlay-image (getting a bit too technical): When it comes to vertical, it becomes more difficult (for me). Horizontal to vertical is not directly transmissible. Screen resolution alter the picture and maybe 1 m horizontal is not as long as 1 m vertical in the game.. To give a scale factor (like the x1.77) for the vertical axis, I'd need an object sufficiently high enough to make an accurate measurement and know its heigh. Preferable 10 m. SL-markers only measure horizontal distance so they cannot be used. I could define a soldier to be 1.8 m heigh then edit 5 and a half of them on top of each other and call that 10 m, but that'd be inaccurate.

I hope you'll make this cool little feature usable in the future, although the magic SL-markers often make it obsolete. The little things... the little things, are the greatness of PR.

Update! due to v1.4
"PR:BF2 v1.4.0.0 Changelog" contains following line under "Weapons":
"Updated binoculars to have less zoom. Reduced officer binoculars to 8x and normal to 6x (From 10x)."
This is to a high extend, a fix to this thread that I have made. I suggested either grid size up-scale or zoom decrease. Zoom has now been decreased and the MRADs are near spot on now. I have no idea if this binocular update in any way was inspired by my thread, but thank you very much anyway.

(Picture recreated in v1.4.4.0 with same condition as the above)
The vehicles are supposed to fit perfectly between the lines. That's quite close now. Measuring between 1 and 2 (and alike) I calculate a distance of 1052m. When measuring from centre (origo) to 1 I get 909m. It's most accurate to not measure from centre, but either results are more accurate than I'd be able to estimate by eye. I'd say that the MRADs has now become successfully useful.
Also the GTLD (officer/spotter binocular) has been made a useful range-finder now, as you can now get the range to the laser mark and see it for more than a split second. It is accurate as fuck down to the meter.

to spot with binoculars aim with a bit - nmber 3 that the center of it maybe like 2.8

DzCrow wrote:to spot with binoculars aim with a bit - nmber 3 that the center of it maybe like 2.8

I don't think you read my post. It has noting to do with placing markers. But yes that is about the center of your screen (-0.1;2.7) if you as a SL want to set an accurate marker somewhere. Or you can just hold q to see where the center of your screen is.

There currently is no plan to get these markers working on the binocs or any other scope (a lot have similar). It is mostly a trial and error task that requires changes to texture and sometimes even model.

CG-Delta wrote:I don't think you read my post. It has noting to do with placing markers. But yes that is about the center of your screen (-0.2;2.7) if you as a SL want to set an accurate marker somewhere. Or you can just hold q to see where the center of your screen is.

well shit my bad

[R-DEV]Mats391 wrote:There currently is no plan to get these markers working on the binocs or any other scope (a lot have similar). It is mostly a trial and error task that requires changes to texture and sometimes even model.

Thanks for the answer.

Target in meters x 1000 = Distance in meters
Number of lines

Now I can assume as OP that a PR character is 1,8 meters tall. The dude in the first picture is also about half a line tall through OPs binoculars.

1,8 x 1000 = 3600 meters
0,5

OK WOW

CG-Delta wrote:That was some useless shit I got there.

As OP hinted at there is something really wrong here. I know the formula works so it would have to be one of the inputs that are off, and yes, we did just guess the target height so let's start there.

OP by the use of the map estimates the target to be ~550 meters away, so let's use that to figure out how tall that character model is if the range really is 550 meters.

So our little fella seems to only be 0,275 meters tall.


I did fire up test airfield and line up a PR character model so it fits nicely in between two of my binocular lines. I then used a GTLD to get a some what accurate reading on the range, 262 meters...

That would make the character model 0,262 meters tall(ish).

0,262 x 1000 = 524 meters
0,5

Not far off OP!

This is also the same for the gb and ch sniper rifles on the first zoom, 2nd zoom I think is a x3 from the first one so just divide number of mildots or lines on 3, seemed to be fairly accurate.

Oh and remember, inclined fire, especially with 40mm, tend to magically increase your range.


DISCLAIMER: Different screen and in game video ratios may yield different numbers, but the way you find them should still be the same.

I am sorry if I'm being dumb here Walker, but did you even read OPs post?

Deep Thought wrote:Now I can assume as OP that a PR character is 1,8 meters tall. The dude in the first picture is also about half a line tall through OPs binoculars.

1,8 x 1000 = 3600 meters
0,5

OK WOW

Hi Deep Thought, welcome to the forum and thanks for the response
First I need to point out that the values like "550m+" and "5 MRADs" I wrote beneath the first picture is as far as I remember is not from the picture. The picture was taken to tell the story and thereby underline MRADs practical usage, and the data was taken from the multi-player scene. The picture is a recreation of the scene with bots on local server. The original target was one picture length left across the river. (+~100m).
You made some mistakes that I'll point out.
I prefer this version of the equation:
target size (m) = distance (km)
angle (MRADs)
You can get distance in meters or MRADs in whatever prefix as long as it goes up, but this is wrong:

Deep Thought wrote:1,8 x 1000 = 3600 meters
0,5

The equation is fine but from 0-1 in the binoculars is 10 MRADs, not 1. You made this mistake through the rest of your calculations.
As 0,5 is 10 times smaller than 5, your smurf being 0,275m tall should be a 2,75m high giant. He should be ~1,8m, but as the binocular grid is like a ruler with a too small scale, thus measuring thing bigger than they are.

Deep Thought wrote:I did fire up test airfield and line up a PR character model so it fits nicely in between two of my binocular lines. I then used a GTLD to get a some what accurate reading on the range, 262 meters...

That would make the character model 0,262 meters tall(ish).

I recreated this test and likewise got 261 meters. I see how you calculated that he then should be 0,262m tall: (262m * 1)/1000 = 0,262m tall, but if you used 10 MRADs instead of 1, you'd get a 2.62m tall soldier.

Deep Thought wrote:0,262 x 1000 = 524 meters
0,5

At first I though you just randomly got close to my old map-estimate, but I see now that 2.62 is (man height*scale correctionfactor in the y-axis)
So I tried to use 2.62 with surprising results, and measured 1.3km. SL-mark said 1350m. I tried again much closer and got 111m, and the fucking GTLD showed 111m. Case closed. I'm writing 2.62 down to use that.
However if you want to measure anything but a standing soldier, you still need a scale correction factor to y- or x-axis. Anyways, cheers.

I should have written in the original post that I didn't suggest that all optics with any shown or hidden (that's a lot) MRAD references should be calibrated to the true angles. That's a waste of time IMO. The work would prove even more difficult for optics with already working ballistic markers. But this item: "Binoculars" is the same item used by all factions. All insurgents, crewmen and snipers has the binoculars. Along with it being a relatively easy fix, I suggested a scale up for "binoculars" and "binoculars" only.

Wing Walker wrote:I don't think any DEVs intended for the reticles in the PR-optics to be actually used for range estimation.

This is not real world physics, this is PR-fizics.

The PR-Sniper rifles have a point blank range of 600m, meaning center of the cross hairs is the hitting out to 600m.

On most maps you can't see past something like 450m or 550m anyway, so range estimation doesn't really matter.

If you really want an indicator of range the only constant would be the height and width of the soldier in a particular rifle's scope, at a certain range.

So you should put your test soldier at 625m or 650m and note the dimensions of the soldier compared to your reticle, so in game you will know when you need to aim above the head.

Put your test soldier next to some structure so you can GLTD/range finde it easier.

I agree that Devs didn't intend it to work. I they wanted, it would fit. They choose a nice usable zoom and put in the nice realistic/immersive grid (usable for difficult spotting). Mainly due to the high zoom, the grid doesn't fit.

Physics like ballistics is not what I'm concerned about. Math/geometry like this can be applied to.. like any virtual 3D space

I disagree that ranging within say 450m isn't useful. That's about as far as many grenade launcher zero to. 50m range means a lot. Being able to give ranges with more accuracy than 50m may enable you to hit a window in first shot. Also it can be used to locate something on the map which is hard to locate on the map without range, due to poor landmarks (example a hill in Biijar Canyons).

"If you really want an indicator of range the only constant would be the height and width of the soldier in a particular rifle's scope, at a certain range."

As that is surely a way to range and aim at the same time, I think it is highly overkill to make a small book of range-tables of all the optics in PR.

Now there may very be a reticle standard out there that counts one line as 10 mrads, but that is something I personally never have encountered, be it inside or outside the military. Now I can assure you, that for the reticles we used, be it for binoculars, spotterscopes or x12 rifle scopes, the formula, and line count, previously described in my original reply is very much correct. I do not know what the reticles in PR are based on.(Not saying all reticles in PR use the same standard, but at least the binoculars, and sniper rifles for gb and ch use the same)

Now the scaling between different objects in PR may be a bit weird, but then again the actual height of the object you try to range is irrelevant, as long as you know the range to it at one(or be it ten) lines. Doesn't really matter what the object is, as you still would need to know how high something is anyway(although slightly more difficult to estimate if that was something you would want to do on the fly, unless you are a PR wizard of course).

The reason why I initially used read the lines as ten's and not one's is because I recognize this same coordinate system layout (-5 to 5 and -3 to 7) from a binocular in the Danish Defence. I found some pictures on Goggle of the like to see if it was common. Not really, quite hard to find.
But if the binoculars in game had to fit 10 MRADs per line, then the zoom had to be about half of what it is. If it had to be 1 MRAD per line, then the zoom had to be 5 times more. So the zoom level fit significantly closer to 10-MRAD-lines. Though the DEVs choice of zoom probably was independent of the MRADs, it still suggests that the DEVs idea of a binocular zoom and size/design of MRAD grid doesn't fall too far from the original real-world source (where zoom and MRAD cohere) they were inspired from.

"...the actual height of the object you try to range is irrelevant, as long as you know the range to it at one(or be it ten) lines."
Sure. Using our previous example; making it Range (m) = 262m/lines. Easy to work with and comprehensive (at least for calculation). Setting up the lines as one unit, measuring the range to calculate a nice package containing [target size][correction factor][prefix].
1) It basicly says. Range is 262 m for each [soldier height]*[correction factor]*kilo (1000) fitting under one line, while the one I mentioned last in my last post to you was:
2) Range is 2.62 km for each [soldier height]*[correction factor] fitting under 1/10th of a line.
3) Likewise the original. Range is 1 km for each [target metre] fitting under 1/10th of a line.
I took me some time to comprehend what happened. But the difference between the first two is just 1 line vs. 1/10 of a line and the output prefix (m or km). Both remove target metres as a variable and replace it with a predetermined target.
You made me think for a long time, YOU. The least I could do would be to deliver you a shit load of badly written analysis. Not even that much compared to the time I used.

NOPE

I'm dumb, ignore this.

Think I am done with this topic lol.

I needed this to be over as well And really; what I wrote was not well written. It got became a bit complicated for me.. So thanks for the discussion.

sorry for the necro

but this thread made me excited. thanks for doing this work man.

my only regret is that grenadier doesnt have binos now.