Virtual pilot's feedback to the player: how to display it?

[6S.Manu]

This thread is about discussing an adequate way to provide the player with all those tacit informations available to a real pilot.

Actually ingame we have only 2 feedbacks: the pilot's current health status (healthy/wounded/dead) and G effect on the circulatory system.

Is evident that we lack many important informations: some are actually simulated by the game, but with no feedback to the player, while other are not really implemented even if they are of primary relevance in a flight combat simulator.

Suggestions are welcomed.

[6S.Manu]

G Force

Human body is an accelerometer: it captures the strenght and the direction of the imposed G forces.

Of course it can't really measure those forces in a detailed way (because of this we find mechanical accelerometers in many planes).

Here's is a way to display it to the player:

Neutral G:
http://img692.imageshack.us/img692/7698/noge.png

Right turn climb (Light G):
http://img818.imageshack.us/img818/632/lightpulluprightturn.png

Right turn climb (Medium G):
http://img213.imageshack.us/img213/4954/mediumpulluprightturn.png

Right turn climb (Heavy G):
http://img221.imageshack.us/img221/4926/heavypulluprightturn.png

For a full 3D accellerometer:
http://img43.imageshack.us/img43/2691/mediumbrake.png
http://img401.imageshack.us/img401/7859/mediumthrust.png

A better version, more recognizable, is this one:
http://img716.imageshack.us/img716/1257/59686168.png
Where the red area is blinking.

Of course it should be resizable.

But why should this be important? Fatigue simulation.

[Sammi79]

Just a thought, I like your accelerometer but it would be fairly straight forward and intuitive way to simply use relative head movement, so the viewpoint is pushed in the mean direction of the G force to a greater or lesser degree.

I guess this would require a bit of careful tuning to work alongside 6DOF head trackers, but the visual cue for G in this way works very well and can trick your brain into something approaching 'feeling' as when G forces shift rapidly the resultant head movement would be very pronounced.

Regards,
Sam.

[6S.Manu]

Just a thought, I like your accelerometer but it would be fairly straight forward and intuitive way to simply use relative head movement, so the viewpoint is pushed in the mean direction of the G force to a greater or lesser degree.

I guess this would require a bit of careful tuning to work alongside 6DOF head trackers, but the visual cue for G in this way works very well and can trick your brain into something approaching 'feeling' as when G forces shift rapidly the resultant head movement would be very pronounced.

Regards,
Sam.

I know Sam, I thought to the head movement too at first... it's more intuitive. Then I've realized that not all the players can afford a TiR device... it could be nice to implement them both and leave the choice to the player. :-)

[robtek]

Also the head movement should increase with the increasing fatigue level, that works also without TIR as long as the movement is limited not to loose sight of the sights.
It could be related to the TIR-setting in the conf.ini -> No TIR -> less movement; with TIR -> more movement which can be neutralized by actual head movement.

[Allons!]

PLEASE dont let them fiddle with TrackIR its already not optimal so no need to get this worse..

[TomcatViP]

Head mvmt was already implemented and it was good.

A lot of players complained about the difficulty to get a good view of the visor (and that was true). But it gave a good sensation of G forces acting on the pilot.

However I like your idea of blinking ring to give an indication of the pilot fatigue. May be some lines of code could be implemented as well to reflect it according to your proposal with muscular fatigue : pull 5G for X minute and your pilot response will be sluggish.

[6S.Manu]

Anyway, with TiR or not, the strenght of the force needs to be visible to the player.

About the outer circle in the new version my idea was:
- transparent => no loss of stamina
- yellow => light loss of stamina
- red => moderate loss of stamina
- blinking red => high loss of stamina

Of course the ranges are dinamic: it's not the force on the plane, it's the one on the pilot whose posture in cockpit and G-suit really influence the effects on the body.

[6S.Manu]

Some documents:

http://spacemedicineassociation.org/timeline/1956/27003.pdf
http://csel.eng.ohio-state.edu/voshell/gforce.pdf