Avatar / pilots body

Jay 737 · October 24, 2016 at 8:55 PM

Hey guys

I spend whole Saturday night "sightseeing" over the new updated scenery and I just could not stop until the morning:)
Awesome work, amazing experience, thank you..
There is couple of things I wrote down throughout the flights, that I wanted to mention here.

Avatar..
I did realized how much VR immersion is going out of window when you look down and there is an empty cockpit. Perhaps this subject was already here but I would like to point out one extremely great concept of avatar/pilots body I saw couple of years ago on my DK2.
I looked up the project and it is still alive so please check it up IPACS, It's called "Discovering Space 2". The mechanics of the pilots body are tight to your oculus tracking so not just a shadow of your head but whole upper body of your avatar is following your head movement which is absolutely brilliant idea..
Honestly even if it's just an add-on pack, I would happily spend £20 for something like that guys.

Then there was a thread here about instrument reflection being little overdone. I was really focusing on this as I also thought that they are overdone. I have to say that in direct sunlight when whole cockpit is gloving in light, the instruments look very well and there is no disruption from that. The strong unreal reflection becomes very apparent when the instruments are shadowed but still reflecting very bright textures..

I ques that's enough for now as you are obviously quite busy with us so keep up the wickedly great work:)

Over and out

Brogers57 · October 24, 2016 at 11:36 PM

When you say new updated scenery, when was this up? Maybe this is because you're on VR and i'm not?

whitav8 · October 25, 2016 at 6:40 AM

Maybe the OP just means the High Resolution Texture Pack for Southwest US (50gb or so) available as a free DLC download. This makes the terrain imagery that was lower resolution away from the airports now available at full resolution. It really makes the Grand Canyon look great!.

Jay 737 · October 25, 2016 at 5:51 PM

Yeah sorry for confusion, I meant the "High Resolution Texture Pack for Southwest US"

Brogers57 · October 25, 2016 at 6:11 PM

Great! I was like "What! an update that I missed?!?"

FlagPilot · October 25, 2016 at 10:38 PM

I think the cockpits are a little bit too bright during the daytime. Wish there was a way to add ReShade or Sweetfx to this sim.

Almdudler · October 27, 2016 at 11:09 PM

Quote from FlagPilot

I think the cockpits are a little bit too bright during the daytime. Wish there was a way to add ReShade or Sweetfx to this sim.

agree,
the shadowed panel surface could be 10-20 percent darker.
some bloom effects of the brighter sun impact areas maybe?

Jet-Pack (IPACS) · October 27, 2016 at 11:52 PM Official Post

If you compare the current image of the Aerofly with pictures or videos then yes, seen in contrast the panel should be darker. BUT if you would allow the cameras or your eyes to focus on the panel only you'd see that it is still very bright and not dark at all in real life. In fact the panels in real life would reflect more light than your monitor at home could produce, not even mentioning the very bright outside sun light.
Your eyes can observe a far greater range of light intensity, ranging from almost 1300watts per square meter (something like 98 000 lux) in direct sunlight at cruizing altitude to the light a candle more than a kilometer away. But your monitor doesn't get close to that, it doesn't really get black and it doesn't produce enough brightness, ergo the brightness range is much to small and the developers have to scale down the brightness.

So as a programmer you have to cheat somehow to get the brightness range down and still provide enough detail and contrast. We could of course just increase the contrast but then you'd throw away details on white materials. If we add bloom the first thing people will ask is where is the setting to disable it - hehe It would be nice though to have more settings for the contrast and gamma, I agree.

Jay 737 · October 28, 2016 at 5:59 PM

Thanks for the detailed description JetPack, it's quite impressive specially the candle example. However I would like to steer this subject back on it's original rails:)
What I wanted to point out was the fact that when you look at the gauges, they have strong reflection of white-ish patches. This effect is not very disturbing at direct sunlight but as it becomes very apparent in shadow, my eyes are automatically drawn to it cause the brain would expect nothing less then reflection of my legs or my beer belly (looking from this angle). Instead I see reflection of clouds and that just doesn't make any sense.. Am I the only person finding this weird?

Also what you guys think about the idea of seeing your avatar inside the cockpit and the concept of moving/following upper body?
Is that something very difficult from programmer's point of view? I'm obviously talking VR purpose:)

Almdudler · October 28, 2016 at 9:13 PM

seems a hard conclusion to find.

i remember playing around with gapa.exe and shade.exe in FSX, that brought some improvement those old days,
but ipacs should be aiming higher and find or even develop next generation dynamic light solutions i assume (compare to maya etc.).
Of course we park this request somewhere in the backyard of the wishlist

Overloaded · October 28, 2016 at 11:42 PM

The peculiar reflections were introduced in mobile AF 2 some years ago, I moaned then!* They are likely to remain as a favoured IPACS 'good idea', a bit like the universally hated achievement awards in mobile FS.

Jay 737 · December 2, 2016 at 10:16 PM

Hey guys, it's me again:)
I just had a brilliant idea for simple "avatar in the cockpit" solution cause I am really craving to see physical body through VR.
Is there by any chance some sort of cfg. file where we could edit cameras x-y-z position?
If so, we can switch to first officer's seat view, with Mr. captain siting next to us and then simply change the camera coordinates to "first seat" bringing the point of view right above his body..
This is not perfect obviously but it will give us some legs guys;)

Jet-Pack (IPACS) · December 3, 2016 at 9:58 AM Official Post

Those files are called .tmd files and yes you can edit the file to show the pilot body in other cameras, too!
All cameras are listed at the very beginning of the .tmd file, just copy their names and paste them in the ShowInside list of the graphics_human object.

Code

<[string8][object][graphics_human]
            <[string8][Name][Pilot]>
            <[string8][GeometryList][ PilotBody ]>
            <[uint32][PositionID][Fuselage.R]>
            <[uint32][OrientationID][Fuselage.Q]>
            <[uint32][ShowInside][ [COLOR=#b22222]CameraPilot [/COLOR]CameraCoPilot CameraPassenger ]>
            <[bone_array][Bones][]
             <[bone][element][0]

No need to "hack" and swap the camera positions here... Though the pilot will stay in the pilot seat.

Cheers,
Jan

Jay 737 · January 14, 2017 at 2:48 AM

Hey Jan
Can you advice where can I find this particular tmd. file please?

whitav8 · January 14, 2017 at 4:00 AM

An example of where the tmd files are (one per aircraft) :

X:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Aerofly FS 2 Flight Simulator\aircraft\a320\a320.tmd

John Hargreaves · January 14, 2017 at 10:30 AM

I hope the devs add a DCS/Project CARS style headless pilot figure for VR. I think it makes a massive difference to immersion in a sim like this.

Rodeo · January 14, 2017 at 12:04 PM

Let me give you an example of the Cessna 172.

Open the file c172.tmd in the directory ...\Aerofly FS 2 Flight Simulator\aircraft\c172.
You may use Notepad++ or any other text editor.
Search for the string graphics_human.

<[string8][object][graphics_human]
<[string8][Name][Pilot]>
<[string8][GeometryList][ PilotBody ]>
<[uint32][PositionID][Fuselage.R]>
<[uint32][OrientationID][Fuselage.Q]>
<[uint32][ShowInside][CameraCopilot CameraRearSeat CameraRearSeatSide]>

Modify the last line to this:
<[uint32][ShowInside][CameraPilot CameraCopilot CameraRearSeat CameraRearSeatSide]>

Now the camera is in the head of the female pilot, but we have to move the camera a little bit more forward to her eyes' position.
Search for the string CameraPilot

<[string8][object][camera_head]
<[string8][Name][CameraPilot]>
<[string8][Body][Fuselage]>
<[tmvector3d][R0][ 0.62 0.23 0.55 ]>

Modify the last line. First value shifts camera position forward/backward, second left/right, third up/down:
<[tmvector3d][R0][ 0.78 0.23 0.55 ]>

Now you have quite a good immersion of the pilot's body.

Oh, of course save the original file before editing it. And you also may copy ypour modified file to another place to avoid replacement by a software update.
Regards
KHR

Almdudler · January 14, 2017 at 4:14 PM

also suggest, the devs start adding co-pilots and passengers. Planes are too light.
Doesn't have to be a professional Weight and Balance module but some sort of basic realism.

When are the helicopters coming?

whitav8 · January 14, 2017 at 10:45 PM

@OP - Jay 737,

EDIT: Whoops - I didn't see the entry from "Rodeo" above - his solution works similarly - mine also requires you to hit the "2" key to cycle through the camera entries. Rodeo's solution is simpler

OK - for aircraft where there is animation of the pilot body (A320, 172,..), you can easily have their body as your avatar!! All you have to do is edit the .tmd file for that aircraft (BACKUP the original), find the "// cameras start"comment and below all the camera entries, add a new one which is a copy of the CameraCoPilot one but edit the position coordinates so you are "inside" the avatar body - just change the sign for the y-coordinate (left-to-right). Here is the solution for the A320 which uses the "andy" pilot. I changed the -0.50 for the R0 entry to 0.50

<[string8][object][camera_head]
<[string8][Name][CameraCoPilot]>
<[string8][Body][Fuselage]>
<[tmvector3d][R0][ 12.07 0.50 0.1 ]>
<[tmvector3d][Direction][ 1.0 0.0 -0.1 ]>
<[float64][Kf][40.0]>
<[float64][Df][1.00]>
<[float64][Kt][0.04]>
<[float64][Dt][0.02]>
<[bool][InCockpit][true]>
<[string8][Tags][cockpit copilot right]>
>

You may have to scoot forward/aft to get in the correct position. Kind of fun to add your own camera positions!

Dave

HiFlyer · January 15, 2017 at 9:33 AM

I wonder if, as Aerofly videos become more complex and professional, there might eventually open up a market for something similar to EZdock, for this program.......

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