46 replies to this topic

[Swinebeast]

Hey guys, I notice the thermal vision I have seen on you tube is predator style, was this from a previous build?
Using direct x11 I realised it wasn't working properly, mechs were shown as black (invisible against a ridge line) with a faint white outline, so I switched to dx9 and now thermal is realistic looking "white hot" with green smoke is this correct?

[Durant Carlyle]

They changed it a while back. It's supposed to be greyscale like modern police thermal vision is.

The green smoke is a recent bug.

[RedEagle86]

Honestly, after seeing all the grey smoke, I kind of like the green smoke. Thermal was also really cool back when it was blue

[Koniving]

What I'd like to see is thermal actually take heat into account.

If it's "white hot," then why is the snow white? It should be black.

I'd also like to see Night vision take light into account.
It ignores many light sources.
Areas brightly illuminated in River city without the night vision are blandly dim with it. Yet areas that are 'dark' without night vision are obscenely bright. Sorry, but night vision amplifies light. It should not amplify darkness.

Edited by Koniving, 26 April 2014 - 11:21 PM.

[Napoleon_Blownapart]

check thermal out on different maps,in forest it can be good to show if a mech is in front of or behind cover...

[Koniving]

NV/Thermal chatter relating to MWO's still incomplete NV and Thermal view modes. o.O;

Spoiler

sneeking, on 26 April 2014 - 10:23 PM, said:

light amplification modules are affected by light sources while thermal vision would only show any heat output from the device emitting the light.

You're stating the realistic interpretation. Which would be great. I would love that; I genuinely would. MWO however does neither of the above stated things from a graphical standpoint on very high settings. This is just being factual.

Light amplification only amplifies certain preset lights; the game actively ignores some secondary and all tertiary light sources. (Example; the functioning street lights by the docks in River City night emit light with night vision off. But with night vision turned on, they do not emit light; only the ambient (sourceless) lighting appears as if the lamps do not work when in fact they do work.)

Said lamps working. Warning; animated.

Spoiler

That light is completely ignored, as are many others. Such as these.

Spoiler

Not a single one of those extra light sources are taken into night vision. They simply stop existing.

Thermal also gives NO thermal indication of any radiant heat from light sources; it literally turns the map black and white with extra brightness on 'hot' maps and then makes mechs white. Sometimes it turns off the light sources, sometimes it leaves them on.

Current NV. Notice that much of the lighting is even-toned, despite how none of the environment is 'even-toned' with lighting. There are bright and dark spots of the map caused by secondary and tertiary environmental light sources. The even-tone nature is created by an artificial ambient light with no actual source. Meanwhile thermal is simply painting things black and white.


Granted, in terms of night vision it does accept ambient and some secondary lighting sources now. This is an improvement to old night vision, which completely ignored all light sources and instead emitted its own virtual 'flashlight' (which others could not see) that most players complained about due to the reflections on all buildings.

As seen here, everything in the center of the screen was brighter than the edges (due to a 'spot light' emitting from the cockpit that no one else could see). Old Thermal was terrible for the environment with most of the textures often removed from it but the sonar effect helped with seeing the floor. It did, however, take temperature into account by transitioning from blue purple, yellow orange and red.
Old NV.

Edited by Koniving, 27 April 2014 - 07:30 AM.

[Koniving]

The third choice is play with it off. (See the shots in the spoiler). Game looks amazing. >.>

[Turist0AT]

you are not suppose to see good in this game. Thats why all visions are useless.

[Modo44]

Heat vision is very useful on Caustic Valley. It turns targets dark at long distances, and the effect appears to work at any range.

[Durant Carlyle]

sneeking, on 26 April 2014 - 11:51 PM, said:

it's suposed to be 31st century tech but its worse than a 1980 russian field scope from a disposals store.

If you pay attention to the lore at all, you'd know that they have been constantly at war for hundreds of years, and basically bombed themselves back to the stone age. They were getting to the point of factories shutting down due to not having anyone who knew how to maintain them. Nobody knew how to manufacture fusion reactors any more, so it's a good thing the automated factories were still able to put out a good number every year.

The advanced electronics in 'Mechs also suffered from lack of people who could maintain them. The targeting and tracking systems were often ripped out and replaced by simple line-of-sight aiming systems.

Then people started finding Brian Caches and LosTech memory cores, which allowed them to rediscover advanced technology in many fields, including medical, manufacturing, and war machines.

[TheCaptainJZ]

The blue heat mode was done away with as it was used more than regular vision was on all maps because of how well it distinguished mechs from the environment. Basically, you'd be gimping yourself if you didn't use it.

[Swinebeast]

Thanks, wanted to make sure I wasn't suffering any graphic anomalies. Yeah I noticed the hot snow, and the NV just turning everything green.
Yeah the vision modes can be helpful, but would be nice to extend the range, in most cases it's better off, tho can be advantageous at times. Nice point about caustic, will try it out, I use NV at the crater for spotting contacts through the smoke/steam when sniping.

Edited by Swinebeast, 27 April 2014 - 01:33 AM.

[ThatBum42]

I like using Thermal on HPG because the mechs contrast poorly with the background in standard view. And Frozen City of course. Sometimes on other maps I turn it on briefly while close-range skirmishing, but other than that I leave it off.

Also, a while ago I noticed that the smoke from dead mechs (among other things, but mech smoke is the most black and dense) obscures my view to a target. Night vision allows me to see through the smoke.

Edited by ThatBum42, 27 April 2014 - 01:45 AM.

[CSHubert]

Durant Carlyle, on 26 April 2014 - 09:09 PM, said:

They changed it a while back. It's supposed to be greyscale like modern police thermal vision is.

The green smoke is a recent bug.

Wait a minute... I thought the green smoke was intended. LOL

[Swinebeast]

Yeah, would be cool to have a mech warrior sim, imagine an AC/20 fire accurately to 5000m, (taken off mod smoothbore, yeah it's not 120mm vs length but it's 3050! even if some tech was lost!) or machine guns effective at 2000m, and this is today's standard! Tho it would open up a huge can of worms regarding design (target profile??),fire control, ballistic penetration/type/angle/armour/thickness....lol....maybe better to remain a game and keep the illusion Would be pretty cool tho, steel beasts with mechs!

[Swinebeast]

I'm certainly not an expert at MWO but it certainly feels like an Atlas should at least have some sort of heat advantage to offset it's bulk and speed (not talking ECM). A great pilot will be able to make the best of any chassis but it should be inherently the king of the battlefield. In my FB I fear lights and heavies a lot more than assaults, they cant really hurt me anymore than a heavy at a distance and I can round them up light style in close combat. I just think, "juicy target".
I suppose what I'm saying is they should be a lot more useful than just tanking. Remove ghost heat and balance elsewhere maybe?

[Swinebeast]

Nice, that would be very cool.

[Swinebeast]

Well a board game adaption I think would be inherently flawed moving to real time, realistic weapon/fire control system behaviour.
But what somehow makes MWO cool and is the rich lore which adds a lot of depth, that I think it needs.
Maybe a total recreation of MW would be cool, if it was a sim at the core, a lot of established board game rules could be overlooked due to the realistic nature of the product, and widely accepted I expect.
Maybe it hurts more with MWO because it's not fully adhering to lore even tho it could a lot more due to its casual nature.

Edit: My point being, if it was a sim you could discard a lot of lore/rules and it would be accepted by battle tech fans, discard them in MWO as it is and it would lose a lot of what's it's got going for it.

Edited by Swinebeast, 27 April 2014 - 05:55 AM.

[Koniving]

Swinebeast, on 27 April 2014 - 04:30 AM, said:

I'm certainly not an expert at MWO but it certainly feels like an Atlas should at least have some sort of heat advantage to offset it's bulk and speed (not talking ECM). A great pilot will be able to make the best of any chassis but it should be inherently the king of the battlefield. In my FB I fear lights and heavies a lot more than assaults, they cant really hurt me anymore than a heavy at a distance and I can round them up light style in close combat. I just think, "juicy target".
I suppose what I'm saying is they should be a lot more useful than just tanking. Remove ghost heat and balance elsewhere maybe?

They do, if you carry more heatsinks. You should be able to easily fit up to 27 DHS for a firing threshold of 88.56 and a cooling rate of 5.037 per second (very quickly done so may be off by a decimal). Basically if you fired 5 AC/5s you'd NEVER see heat while standing still. Of course you can't carry 5 AC/5s. But a single medium laser would NEVER generate any heat. Any heat. At all.
Note you need a big engine to help you stuff that many. Only the Boar's Head can fit a large enough engine.

Though if you go single heatsinks and an XL engine, you can nearly reach that for a threshold of 87.6 (43 SHS) and a cooling rate of 49.45/sec.

Here's what 42 SHS can do on Terra Therma (where you suffer a 25% reduction to cooling and to threshold) with 2 large lasers and 2 ER large lasers fired back to back to back to back to back to back to back to back to back to back to...you get the idea.

It's all in how you build your mech.

[Modo44]

sneeking, on 27 April 2014 - 05:03 AM, said:

this lore business seems like it can be broken and adhered too when the powers that be see fit.

so why not discard it ?

It is discarded or kept depending on technical capabilities and game balance. Predator vision was simply too powerful, making other modes irrelevant. When one thing wins all the time, the game becomes boring, so it was removed.

Edited by Modo44, 27 April 2014 - 07:52 AM.