Project Reality Forums

Should the environment have a thermal signature. As at Kashan the desert sand should be very hot and should kinda make thermal useless and make locking on a lot harder when you are diving on a target. Hence possibly reducing CAS chopper hunting each other.

As I remember watching a A10 documentary where the first A10 gun kill occurred when the pilot couldn't lock on due to the hot sand in Iraq during the first gulf war.

Your thoughts?

Thermals automatically adjust, or can be manually adjusted, so that hot things appear REALLY hot compared to others.


For example, a burning tank will be bright white, while a campfire might not be visible at all.

Sounds hardcoded, I am not sure how its worded but I think for example an infantry has tons of polygons in their models that consists of mesh lines or something of that sort and because they are so compact and ontop of one another the code or whatever makes the model appear very white. Terrain however is extremely expansive and probably very few polygons compared to a vehicle or infantry model.

I thought thermal was done with a specific texture made for it that only shows up in thermal mode? or something like that. Which if I'm correct I would think that would make it being hardcoded very unlikely. I'd go with the adjusting bit. while were on this topic is there any chance we can get the plants to stop being so hot?

That's true enough, about the plants. A dead bush is as hot as a soldier with an AT launcher.

Astromici wrote:That's true enough, about the plants. A dead bush is as hot as a soldier with an AT launcher.

well as it is now, it isnt as hot as a soldier.

@OP:
hmat first i liked the idea cause i thought you just meant to reduce environments heat signature, but how would you realize hot sand?? making the ground full of flares?

Rocks are almost as hot as tanks.

lolwut

Zoddom wrote:well as it is now, it isnt as hot as a soldier.

@OP:
hmat first i liked the idea cause i thought you just meant to reduce environments heat signature, but how would you realize hot sand?? making the ground full of flares?

eh... no make it show up hot by adjusting the shader settings or the texture (if that's how it's done)

If you mean in real life, Sun makes things hot. in the desert a tank's heat signature bight barely show up against the sand during the day. and a person would be pretty much invisible. Once the Taliban and Al qaeda found out we had thermals they used this to their advantage in iraq and afghanistan choosing to ambush and attack at high noon when the sun is directly over head.

^using that tactic our thermals are useless.

Bringerof_D wrote: in the desert a tank's heat signature bight barely show up against the sand during the day. and a person would be pretty much invisible. Once the Taliban and Al qaeda found out we had thermals they used this to their advantage in iraq and afghanistan choosing to ambush and attack at high noon when the sun is directly over head.

^using that tactic our thermals are useless.

You have a source for any of this?

(not saying you're wrong, would just like to read)

[R-DEV]Jaymz wrote:You have a source for any of this?

(not saying you're wrong, would just like to read)

unfortunately i cant post my Sgt on the internet or i would. This is just something we were told by our instructors while i was on course doing SQ with PPCLI who operate with LAVs. I'll see if i can find anything on google though. For now all i can give is as closed to word for word as i was told.

the question we asked was how the Taliban could get so close to our FOBs and convoys despite our monitoring capabilities.

His answer was,

"The terrain in Afghanistan provides plenty of visual cover for the enemy and they use this to their advantage. Sure we have thermals too but the Taliban are smart, when they figured out we could spot them with our thermals they started only attacking around when the sun is directly above their target. it get's so hot over their our thermals were as good as blind."

ArmA 2 has a much more detailed heat view compared to what is possible with BF2

http://images.eurogamer.net/assets/arti ... 01.bmp.jpg

http://www.ddgamer.com/sigs/images/back ... 930/27.jpg

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_CjFQem7UIVI/T ... llWarm.jpg

A persons hands and face don't have the same temperature as his clothes, same thing with helicopters and tanks. A tank has a hot engine block and warm tracks.

Could we just make it you can't lock on when you are diving on a target. As he's behind very hot sand. But you can still lock on if the target is behind a cooler background IE the sky. Hence should reduce the attack chopper hunting on Kashan. As it would be useless to fly high and sweep down on other attack choppers since you can't lock on.

As he's behind very hot sand

If it is very hot everything will be as visible as on very cold sand. What matters is temperature difference between objects, not temperature on its own.

Yes but thermal and aa missiles lock on are different. AA missile need a big difference in heat otherwise a ciggeret will be as an effective counter measure as a flare.

After all as far as that documented is concerned if sidewinders had trouble locking on in the heat. So should diving helicopters. And if we make it so it should stop helicopters from flying high as. If they do so they are against a cool sky which makes them easier to shoot down. And if they don't fly high there is no more annoying attack choppers just cowering at the corner of the map not doing anything but trying to hunt the other attack chopper.

Funnily enough, the snow flakes on that new winter map have heat signatures