Oleg or Luthier, recon in COOPs or FMB?

[Flyby]

I've been meaning to ask this for a few days now. Can recon photos be placed in the mission builder as a depiction of the target area? Not sure if it's do-able, but if ya don't ask...
Flyby out

[Feuerfalke]

Not sure if this answers your question, but Oleg stated a few months ago, that there will be an auto-gyro implemented in BoB. If it's not entirely for the coolness-factor or techdemo, it is at least a hint that there is a possibility for recon-flights, one way or the other.

[ECV56_Lancelot]

I've been meaning to ask this for a few days now. Can recon photos be placed in the mission builder as a depiction of the target area? Not sure if it's do-able, but if ya don't ask...
Flyby out

You mean for use on the briefing of the mission?. From what i remember from a previous update that showed a little the briefings guide, you could.

[Flyby]

hi FF,
I don't know what that is, but what i'm looking for is the possibility to view a close up of the target area from a COOP or FMB perspective so the pilots can see it before take-off. Perhaps there will be a way to import such a picture into the briefing? If not, well... sailor-vee! :D (c'est la vive)

Lancelot, that's what I'm thinking of. I hope it's possible.
Flyby out

[Blackdog_kt]

That was something that's been mentioned in the past and i think there were also some screenshots showing that it was possible for SoW to have recon photos in the briefings.

My ideal briefing workstation would be like a small in-game html browser/editor with a few plug-in tools. Say you join a server with an ongoing dynamic campaign, fly recon, land back at the base and then make your recon pictures available to the team lobby.

In order not to put burden on the servers it would have to be a peer-to-peer exchange, but that would strain the player's bandwidth while he's flying. So, it could be something like an integrated file-sharing application...so you set the options like "make this file available from me, for a maximum of 3 simultaneous connections". Or, you could have unlimited connections and upload to your entire team but for a limited time period. Then when you're about to fly a sortie and need a good ping you could stop uploading it and the people who already got it could keep uploading it to the rest of the team. Something like bit-torrent for recon photos and flight plans, where users excange the necessary intel between missions without putting any strain on the server.

To take it one step further, the same picture could be edited once it's downloaded into your briefings and the same could be done for waypoints and maps. For example, say that your team is planning a multi-layered mission. It would be a mess to have all flight plans displayed on one map and all items marked on the recon photo. So, the same photos and flight plans could be modified, with elements added, subtracted or simply made invisible to help in planning.

To see how this would work, let's assume we join a server running a dynamic BoB campaign and we are flying for the axis team. The guy leading the He-111 bombers would draw up his flight plan first, mark known enemy airbases and flak concentrations on the map and mark the targets and aiming point on the reckon photo, along with other points of interest (eg, flak batteries in the vicinity of the target that are visible in the photo). Maybe more than one people could make notes and changes to it at the same time (collaborative editing), so that while one is finalizing the fligh plan another one is drawing circles of flak and radar coverage and enemy interceptor ranges. Then they would save this as "bombers.html" and upload it to the leaders of the fighter groups.

Now, these guys would have a wealth of information regarding the bombers' route. The close escort group would probably use the flight plan as it is. The forward sweep would use the original bomber route to decide on which areas to cover, draw up their own route and then either delete or "hide" the bomber flight plan, save it with a new name (eg, "fightersweep.html") and distribute it among themselves, probably not bothering at all with the recon photos. There could also be other groups, for example a flight of 110s going in low and fast for flak suppression. These guys would get the original "bombers.html" and modify it, so that it displays only their own flight plan and different intel on the recon photo. They wouldn't need to know the He-111's aiming point, but they would surely mark the locations of flak batteries covering the target on the recon photos. This could be saved as "SEAD.html" and distributed among the group.

Finally, when every pilot got the appropriate briefing, he could be allowed to make some changes on his own before launching the mission. Changes to waypoints could be possible even when flying the mission. For example, let's say that my He-111 is mauled over the target and as we leave the target area i have to drop formation and head to the nearest base. The prepared flight plan would be useless to me, so once i stabilised my plane i could draw another one. Deleting all the previous waypoints i would draw new ones that take me to the nearest friendly base, while avoiding as much of the dangerous areas as possible. Or, i could have the complete flight plan for the operation but the routes of the other groups were hidden. If i chose to momentarily toggle them as visible, i could see if my emergency RTB route takes me close to one used by a fighter group, so that maybe i could pick up a couple of 110s to escort me across the channel. Of course, to do this we would need 3-4 course plotting tools docked to our minimap display, like the ones used in Silent Hunter III.

I know my ideas sound crazy, but i know they also sound useful. The good thing is, if Mr. Maddox and his team have allowed for the use of image/text files and scripts in briefing and AI, there is no limit to what the community could come up with. For example, you could be running a navigator script that calculates estimated time of arrival to the end of the route and to each individual waypoint, estimated fuel burn and so on. It would not only be useful when trying to nurse a stricken bomber back to base, it would also be like having a full interactive crew. You'd still have to take the final decisions yourself but you wouldn't have to do everything on your own. Instead you would have the necessary information from your crew members to decide on the best course of action, just like real captains used to do.

[Flyby]

Blackdog_kt, that is a well thought out and articulate reply. If Oleg has something similar in mind THAT would be the game-breaker for all other competitors in combat flight sims! I like it!
Flyby out

[BadAim]

+1 I think this will be the beauty of the Modular and modable engine that the "Boyz from Moscow" are building. I think the only limits to SOW will be those built in by Maddox games, and the communities imagination, and I think the latter will be no limit at all. That said, I bet they have something simple and elegant in store for us in this department.

The thing that has impressed me most about Maddox games is their consistent ability to come up with economical (resource wise) solutions to so many problems. The first time that I realized that they had packed twice the sim into half the space as Cfs2 (c700MB v c1.3 Gig) I knew I had stumbled onto something special. I believe my first thought was something like "Damn them Ruskies write some tight code!"

Here's to the Ruskies and their damn fine code!!

[Xilon_x]

in addition to reconnaissance photos.
also emergency information to other squadrons of pilots may be useful to update the target map.
also advised to ships or submarines.
a pilot launches with parcadute launches a radio signal of its position.
map and initially 'clean not much information.

[Blackdog_kt]

Well, i'm glad it makes sense without having to whip out my immense MSPaint skills and start drawing ugly pictures :grin:

Icefice had some very nice ideas about updating information as well in another thread (i think it was the "give me some holy sh** ideas" thread). He mentioned a very nice example of interactive crew where the player is supposedly patrolling in a Blenheim, the crewmen call out all kinds of contacts including ships, so they call out a friendy destroyer. The ship mistakenly opens fire on the player's Blenheim, player pulls up to show off his underwing roundels, orders the crew to fire a recognition flare and the firing stops. Then the radio operator says that the ship is signalling them in morse code with those "flashlights" they used and he starts translating the message. The ship apologizes for the friendly fire and advises them of a flight of Bf109s in the vicinity. How great is that? I don't know about you, but i think that having the right set of interactions and "rules" between AI entities could make the same mission a different experience each time you fly it. Just thinking about it gets my hands itching :grin:

So many things we ask for and so much work to make them, that's why i'm glad they went the modular route with the development of SoW:BoB, it will enable us to do it ourselves and save time for everyone.

I mean, flying FSX on a friend's PC, i've seen some things that are so beyond what the original engine was capable of that the add-on makers had to write their own save/load routines to make the sim save all of the necessary parameters and not have them reset to default values each time the player loads a flight in mid-air.
The reason is that FSX, despite it's shortcomings in other fields, is a sufficiently modular product to allow for that. Even an ordinary user can add pop-up instrument panels of his choice, simply by copying-pasting a few lines of text between aircraft configuration files. For example, if i don't like the default GPS used in the plane i'm flying and i want to use one from another aircraft, i can add it in 2 minutes only by using notepad and i don't even have the game on my PC, i just fly it when i visit my buddy. It's that simple.
If FSX can do that, i'm sure SoW will be able to do equally well at the very least.

+1 I think this will be the beauty of the Modular and modable engine that the "Boyz from Moscow" are building. I think the only limits to SOW will be those built in by Maddox games, and the communities imagination, and I think the latter will be no limit at all. That said, I bet they have something simple and elegant in store for us in this department.

The thing that has impressed me most about Maddox games is their consistent ability to come up with economical (resource wise) solutions to so many problems. The first time that I realized that they had packed twice the sim into half the space as Cfs2 (c700MB v c1.3 Gig) I knew I had stumbled onto something special. I believe my first thought was something like "Damn them Ruskies write some tight code!"

Here's to the Ruskies and their damn fine code!!

You can say that again. So much packed into so little space and running well enough on a wide range of PCs when compared to the prevalent PC specs at the time of release of each sequel, plus it's like it didn't age at all during the first 5-6 years. That's almost insane.

[PeterPanPan]

Yes, I asked this a while back. See my post at http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showpost.php?p=116962&postcount=175 and Luthier's exciting reply at http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showpost.php?p=117100&postcount=182

PPanPan

[Flyby]

Then I'm glad I brought it up again!:D I was not aware of your post, n or of Luthier's reply.
Flyby out

[nearmiss]

All you have to do in IL2 is fly over the recon area, record a video track and add it into you campaign files. The problem with all the videos is the size of the campaign for download becomes very large.

[Flyby]

So how to overcome the problem?
Flyby out

[TheGrunch]

On the subject of the photos and Blackdog's file-sharing idea, I'm sure it would be easier to just send the position and orientation of the recon aircraft's camera over the map at the moment it took the photo and just generate the "photo" client-side. That's bytes rather than kilobytes for a start, no need for any kind of complicated sharing system there.
I like the collaborative-editing idea for drawing on the recon photos, although it does open the door for lamers and suchlike. Perhaps it could be a server option, or only the recon pilot and leader of the attack squadron could edit it. Probably the most you'd need to do is draw on it with an in-game "red pen" editor anyway. Given that we're trying to conserve bandwidth here just to be neat, the resolution of the annotations made doesn't have to be as high as the photo itself. not much point! Just make it a transparent .tga with the same aspect ratio overlaid onto the recon photo.
It's probably worth pointing out that putting any kind of responsibility in the hands of one person is a dubious idea in a multiplayer game so perhaps a voting system to kick someone out of the leader spot would be wise.
I don't think it's so much necessary for the exchange of .html files, either. Ideally, the leaders of each squadron could simply set their waypoints on the map by simply drawing the lines and typing in altitudes (and maybe naming each waypoint), and these would appear on the briefing map for everyone on the same side, coded by colour for each squadron (with a key at the side), once they were completed. Once again this is simply co-ordinates and a few words so there's no need for any kind of big file-swapping system. No need to make any kind of distinction as to who gets what information and suchlike, may as well just keep recon photos in a separate tab and just make the briefing text specific to the squadron in question. For real awesome-sauce it would be cool to allow the possibility for each squadron leader to write down their own little addendum to the briefing containing advice and "tally-ho, give 'em what for, chaps" and suchlike that would be visible to their squadron once they finished typing it and clicked okay or whatever, for those people who don't use voice-comms or just for the fun of it.
As for the mid-mission chart-editing, it's a cool idea, and it only has to use the same interface as the original briefing map so it's not even like it would be a lot of effort if the above part was already done. Say you got badly shot up, you'd just open up the map, press the edit button, click through a "Are you sure you want to edit the flightplan" dialogue so that you don't start moving stuff around accidentally, and then make your new flightplan from your current location. It would be useful if the navigator actually told you to "come around to <new course>" if you were off-course or got to a waypoint, as well.
Basically, I think they're really really good ideas, but they could use some simplification. :)

[Blackdog_kt]

Nice one Grunch! I see there's a lot of us interested in this, so as the ideas fly we'll end up with better stuff that's also easier to implement and smoother to run. Keep the brain-storming coming everyone :grin:

[Flyby]

You guys are really on top of this! :) For my simple needs, if I were building a COOP mission in which there were ground targets, and I could place a target at a specific point on a map, I'd like an option such as right-clicking a target and having the drop-down menu present an option to export an image to the mission briefing of the attackers. Nothing too large kb-wise, and with the ability to rotate the target site to present the view from the attack heading, before exporting it to the briefing. That's just my simple request. You guys are obviously well beyond that. Good stuff, men.
Flyby out