127 replies to this topic

[Dragonkindred]

CnlPepper, on 21 April 2013 - 01:14 PM, said:

He he, they couldn't afford me. In my previous post my charge out rate was £700+ per day plus costs.

How about you work for MC instead

That way you might have enough for a Timer Wolf when they come out!

[Birkow]

bump
I think it is great idea.

[aseth]

Very neat.

It would be nice if there were hot and cool areas of mechs - hot by the heat sinks, engine, and weapons, but that might be too much detail.

One thing that could be considered as a balancing factor is modifying things based on both the target's and your heat levels. Thermal could become less effective (possibly by losing resolution, or getting more blurred) as your personal heat level gets higher, as it interferes with your sensors.

[EvilCow]

Some interesting concepts in this thread, PGI should give them a try.

[Sephlock]

Please tell me why we don't have fusion power yet, and why that reactor in france is only going on line for a short time, and also what the technical term is for the type of thermal goggles that let you see predator vision as opposed to black and white or green vision.

[CnlPepper]

The colours produced on the display of thermal imaging cameras are artificially added, the light they measure is in the infrared spectrum (invisible to humans). It is up to the manufacturer of the imager how they map the measured infrared intensity to the visible colours shown on the display - this could be black and white or a range of colours. Typically the colour LUT (look up table) is selectable - for example the software that comes with the FLIR A320 allows you to select from about 10 different colour tables (which you can extend by defining you own). The "predator vision" goggles are just thermal imaging cameras with a particular selection of display settings.... I think the rainbow colour table FLIR uses is closest to the one used in predator.

Regarding ITER, the fusion experiment currently being constructed in Cadarache, France... you are in luck as fusion is my specialist subject!

I work at Culham, UK on the MAST and JET tokamak fusion experiments. Specifically, I'm a diagnostic research scientist. The simple reason we don't have fusion yet is it is extremely complicated in both physics and engineering, it was also underfunded for a lot of the previous decades. When people first started exploring fusion in the 50s, they did not appreciate the complexity. It has taken a long time for our technology to catch up to the levels needed to construct reactor scale experiments (computers turned up for instance). Despite gaining a huge amount of physics knowledge from the current/previous experiments, there are still a few engineering unknowns that need to be explored - this are what ITER is being built to investigate. Given what we've learnt over the last decades, we can be reasonably confident the ITER will output more fusion power than is required to electrically power it. In what is known as "scenario 1" we are aiming at producing ~10x the power that is supplied. Please note this is not power supplied to the grid, none of the power is collected. This reactor is purely aimed at experimentation and is not constructed to run for considerable lengths of time like a power station would - plus it has tons of diagnostics on it that a power station would not need. If ITER is a success then the next step is to build DEMO which is a true prototype fusion power station. I recommend you have a read around www.iter.org if you want to know more. If all goes to plan we could see DEMO in ~20 years. Why so long..... we'll ITER is currently considered to be the most complex machine humans have ever built and involves many of our most advanced technologies (superconductors, nuclear engineering, advanced remote handling etc..). These things take time the first time you build them!

Edited by CnlPepper, 06 May 2013 - 09:10 AM.

[KnightmareX13]

Please make this happen. I understand that the game is supposed to be futuristic but at least make is so that snow doesn't register as being "white hot".

[Forty Eight]

Why don't they simply implement some maps to be during the thermal-cross over time so you can't use your thermal imaging? It's a real thing, some of the hotter maps should have it anyway. That would reduce the snipe-tastic need for thermal vision, but not nerf us completely on cold, low visibility maps.