567 replies to this topic

[3rdworld]

Thontor, on 08 March 2013 - 08:34 AM, said:

I disagree with you, but respect your opinion and I can see where you are coming from... But is it really necessary to essentially call anyone that disagrees with you a skill-less nub?

Yep... The dev post did say accuracy aka realism was lower on the priority list than gameplay and visuals... And their gameplay intent is clearly that vision modes are used for seeing in low visibility environments, not for long range sniping.

The Nub comment wasn't directed at you. He made a snide comment and I returned in kind. It may have painted you with the same brush but that was not the intent.

How is gameplay improved? there is maybe 1 map Frozen city night where it is clear enough and mechs will stand out enough against the snow where normal vision can see distances that I can shoot. Apline/river city/forest colony (unless they are standing directly in the snow) etc are all way to brown to see a mech that far.

So again I ask why on earth would I take an ER weapon given that 1 map and situational usage at best on others, will I be able to use its full range? This does not improve gameplay. this butchers it.

[vasile]

They look nice, but in the future they should bring back infrared vision as a module. To spot those mechs that are having heat problems.

[Jello2142]

The thermal and night vision 2.0 looks good and I am sure with future work will be excellent! I am relieved that I will be able to run the Mark II eyeball more frequently instead of falling back on HV to keep the edge on everyone else doing the same.

Good work!

[Orthodontist]

This is good.

I give you +1 Internets.

[Matthew Craig]

Karl Split, on 08 March 2013 - 03:15 AM, said:

Looks great im stoked for this change.

My one concern is that some people (myself included) still seem to suffer from a known bug where our screens will darken to almost black when up heavy fire from certain weapon types (SSRMS, ballistics etc).

The solution to this has always been to swap to thermal as that mode was unaffected somehow. Will you guys be looking at this issue as well? Im running an NVIDIA graphics card if that helps (I heard it may be card specific - not sure)

Yes art is currently addressing this issue so no concerns there Karl

[Butane9000]

These new visions modes are a massive improvement. Congrats for finally fixing them devs.

Edit: Okay never mind, scheduled for April 2nd.

Edited by Butane9000, 08 March 2013 - 09:06 AM.

[Matthew Craig]

Scipio Nostra, on 08 March 2013 - 04:45 AM, said:

Having used thermal vision on my tank for several years (rl), there is something which seems off:

the higher the difference in temperature, the better you can spot something. So, a hot mech on a glacier should be very easy to spot, since the ice and snow provide a smooth (cold) background. There is no reason why normal vision should be better than thermal in this case.

In which situations does thermal vision fail?
a.) Spotting something which has approx the same temp as the background (like dug in tank with its engine off for some time).
b.) And that's the point which could be relevant for MWO imo - rain, snow and fog (read: water in the air) will reduce the effectivness of your thermal vision. Dunno if its possible, but if you had weather changes during a match (or 2 map versions) it would make a difference for the usage of thermal view.

As mentioned I don't disagree Scipio but we didn't want thermal to have unlimited range this falls in the gameplay category of considerations. If anyone has better ideas of how to reduce it's effectiveness rapidly after a certain distance while keeping it more realistic looking I'm all ears.

[3rdworld]

Using his mech model setting in a brown location this is what you would see.

Tell me sniping isn't dead. Please

Edited by 3rdworld, 08 March 2013 - 08:57 AM.

[Side Step]

3rdworld, on 08 March 2013 - 08:14 AM, said:

Here is a vid of a guy picking individual people out with thermal at 5km. but ya i guess 3050 tech is only 14% as good as what we currently have. Oh and this is an attachment to a rifle, not a 100 ton war machine.

That video is still grayscale. Not blue mechs on grayscale background. This was the most important change to me. The zoom feature is superior in that video though. MWO definitely needs better zoom.

Edited by Side Step, 08 March 2013 - 09:00 AM.

[3rdworld]

Matthew Craig, on 08 March 2013 - 08:53 AM, said:

As mentioned I don't disagree Scipio but we didn't want thermal to have unlimited range this falls in the gameplay category of considerations. If anyone has better ideas of how to reduce it's effectiveness rapidly after a certain distance while keeping it more realistic looking I'm all ears.

Or you could just make the others as good, instead of nerfing the only way we have to use a weapons full range.

[Krzysztof z Bagien]

Night vision - looks OK, probably will be usefull now (though it still seems that Thermal will be superior to NV in almost every situation)
Thermal vision - it's a step forward and look way better than current version, but I don't like it that mechs are blurred, but everything else is not. Maybe make it a little blurry over all so NV is superior to HV when it comes to navigating?
I don't like the idea of limiting effective range of vision modes to 700m. I think it should be more like map specific (on hot maps HV has low range, but on cold ones it's pretty effective; NV is effective on maps with clear air, but on foggy maps you can't see far).
And I think it would be nice to be actually able to see farther using normal view mode.

[Matthew Craig]

Thontor, on 08 March 2013 - 07:02 AM, said:

Not exactly:



Not all modes... Both, as in night vision and thermal...

Normal vision will still be able to see well past that, as seen in the screenshots of Alpine which were put in to demonstrate this. Thermal and night vision are for low visibility... Darkness, fog, snow, etc... Normal vision+zoom are for sniping.

Better zoom combined with normal view and you will have no trouble sniping at long range.

Will low visibility maps like river city night and frozen city be bad for snipers? Absolutely. I don't see a problem wih that, just like I don't see a problem with specialized short range mechs being less desirable on alpine.

Correct there's actually currently a bug with Mechs draw distance in normal vision that is also being fixed as we speak and will probably be in either the 19th patch or if not April 2nd to address that. So normal vision is your option for long range sniping.

[Matthew Craig]

3rdworld, on 08 March 2013 - 07:10 AM, said:

Normal vision is worthless. It has no contrast between mech and background. It is still as worthless for sniping as it is currently. See river city. Clear map bases around 1000m apart. Impossible to snipe with normal vision. Soon to simply be impossible to snipe. Oh look at his post. You can spot a brown spot on a white map. Whoopity do. Most of the maps are brown and it would be impossible to see that mech standing on anything but snow. Certainly not clear enough to hit it consistently.

Bear in mind in the screenshots I'm not zoomed in, zoomed in you should be able to make that shot and advanced zoom will eventually help even more. The goal is not to allow you to snipe all the way across a map though, otherwise what is the point of the larger maps, again if we went for full real world accuracy most Mech engagements even using 20th century technology would begin with some incredibly rapid target detection (throw up a UAV and spot everyone instantly) followed by launching a barrage of devastating nuke like attacks that mean the match is over in about 30 seconds and nothing but scorched earth is left behind. Cool to watch but not necessarily fun to play long term

[Joe Mallad]

Matthew Craig, on 08 March 2013 - 09:06 AM, said:

Bear in mind in the screenshots I'm not zoomed in, zoomed in you should be able to make that shot and advanced zoom will eventually help even more. The goal is not to allow you to snipe all the way across a map though, otherwise what is the point of the larger maps, again if we went for full real world accuracy most Mech engagements even using 20th century technology would begin with some incredibly rapid target detection (throw up a UAV and spot everyone instantly) followed by launching a barrage of devastating nuke like attacks that mean the match is over in about 30 seconds and nothing but scorched earth is left behind. Cool to watch but not necessarily fun to play long term

thank you a million times!!

[Erwiin]

Night vision is nearly there. Type "army night vision" into Google images for a better idea how night vision really works. You'll notice that the sky is a lot brighter and that shadows seem to be more defined.

Thermal vision looks fairly good.

Magscan should be interesting whenever it is implemented.

[Death Mallet]

Great job guys! Been looking for a reason to stop watching blue blobs all day.

Glad to see the game making some nice steps in the right direction!

[Krzysztof z Bagien]

And one more thing: sun should be visible in thermal vision, it's hot as hell.

[Matthew Craig]

BloodLegacy, on 08 March 2013 - 08:22 AM, said:

Night vision looks spot on now. My criticism for thermal is not that the terrain heat is shown too high, but that mechs heat signiture is too low. On a cold map a running battlemech should stick out like a beacon even if their heat isn't particularly high. Conversely on a map with high ambient temperature the heat signiture would be more blended with the background making it nearly worthless. Also, in all forms of thermal imaging since the '80s the image is crisp and clean, not fuzzy or blurred as shown.
Also, I would like to be able to switch between white-hot to black-hot on the fly please.

Essentially, thermal should be useless on Calderra, but on Alpine it should be the mode of choice because a mechs heat is so much greater that the environment that they stand out more.

Still a huge improvement, I love the return to grey scale thermal.

With respect to the Mechs heat signature that Jenner is at idle heat, I'll try and post some more shots but trust me he glows up bright when close to overheating.

With regards to blurriness for thermal, as I've mentioned if someone has good feedback on how to degrade functionality of thermal at a distance in a different way that looks more realistic/cool we're open to it.

The toggle to invert white-black we'll discuss internally.

[Matthew Craig]

Erwiin, on 08 March 2013 - 09:09 AM, said:

Night vision is nearly there. Type "army night vision" into Google images for a better idea how night vision really works. You'll notice that the sky is a lot brighter and that shadows seem to be more defined.

Thermal vision looks fairly good.

Magscan should be interesting whenever it is implemented.

We lose a lot of the sky information due to falling out the night vision after a certain distance so this was a conscious decision that said though we may look if there is a way we can cheat a bit in the future and bring back a more subtle contribution to make it look more accurate without compromising the intended game-play effect of not making it unlimited vision.

[1453 R]

Heh...you folks are lucky. I had a big, extremely angry rant ready to go after watching all the usual suspects pulling their crap again in this thread. Vomiting hate and bashing devs for no reason.

Then my log-in expired, I had to refresh it, and read up on the page of thread I missed while setting up for a positively draconian blast of flames. Matthew Craig, you're a more patient man than I and you're doing your best to talk to folks on the issue and address the problems people have. I respect that quite a bit given what you folks have to deal with on a daily basis from the rage-spewing assmonkeys hanging around this place, and in light of that respect I'm not going to make your job harder.

Heh...all I'll say is this: the current implementation of thermal vision is an enormous advantage to sniper players that they have to do nothing to earn. Just like, perhaps, ECM is an enormous advantage to close-range players they have to do nothing to earn? Obviously the two aren't directly comparable - I mean, ECM takes up weight and critical spaces, after all!

Perhaps the solution to being caught out in a small/vision-impaired map without Sniper Batman Vision, sniper folks, is to mebbe dump yer fifth and sixth PPCs for something possibly approaching a balanced armament?