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Compounding lasers, really?


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#21 DaisuSaikoro Nagasawa

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Posted 19 July 2012 - 10:12 AM

I think we are all under appreciating the significance of what has been mentioned. Multi coloured lasers are a farce and I, for one, would support anyone who would wish not to play the new game due to these major technical inaccuracies. I would, however, recommend that for people to have their disgruntled feelings noticed to buy into one of the Founder Packages to show just how serious you are about the game, attempt to get into the Beta, and right these painful wrongs.

#22 Prat

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Posted 19 July 2012 - 10:18 AM

View Postthontor, on 19 July 2012 - 10:14 AM, said:

you are right, color does equal type...
Blue = Large
Green = Medium
Red = Small

Tommytools is referring to the latest video, showcasing the Centurion, which showed what appeared to be Yellow and Purple lasers. A dev recently explained this was due to the effect of addititve color. When you combine light of different colors, it appears to be a completely seperate 3rd color

So, the video showed

Purple (actually Magenta) = Large and Small lasers combined
Yellow = Medium and Small laser combined

.. you could also get the following
Cyan (aka Aqua, or light blue) = Large and Medium lasers combined
White = Large, medium, and small lasers combined



Heh you're right... and I got that AFTER re-reading some of the other comments and watching the vid again.

I suppose I'd rather see multiple separate beams of awesome ... but I don't think this will kill the game for me :P

#23 Teirdome

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Posted 19 July 2012 - 10:18 AM

To me it looks like the transparency on lasers was cranked a little high. While this is okay when there is only a single laser on a location, when there are multiple it winds up blowing out the color (the greenish-yellow seen from the cent's CT from 2 MLs) or making the colors look nasty. It should be a pretty simple fix.

#24 Brenden

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Posted 19 July 2012 - 10:19 AM

Could it be what he meant was that they were overlapping, so that the colors blended to make said lasers.
And besides, this is fiction, I'm surprised that we could even see the lasers.

#25 William Petersen

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Posted 19 July 2012 - 10:23 AM

View Postthontor, on 19 July 2012 - 10:14 AM, said:

Yellow = Medium and Small laser combined


That's just it though, there was no SLas on the mech firing the "yellow" beams. They were two MLas.

#26 PANZERBUNNY

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Posted 19 July 2012 - 10:23 AM

View PostTommytools, on 19 July 2012 - 09:40 AM, said:

I know this is a game and there is a large element of suspension of disbelief, but I have a real issue with the way laser colours are shown in the centurion vid. Even more so with the given explanation in the locked thread. (I would have posted this there if it hadn't been locked.)

Lasers being visible?... Ok, can live with that, battlefields tend to be very smoky/dusty environments after all.

But lasers compounding to different colours? ... Maybe its my aspergers acting up, but that REALLY rubs me the wrong way...

Lasers are coherent light, meaning it is VERY directed and focused. To compound 2 different wavelengths they HAVE to be travelling parallel in the exact same plane. To get the beams to travel in parallel and close enough to affect eachother they HAVE to share a focusing device (lens or mirror), which makes it impossible for two seperate and distinct lasers (IE not sharing a focusing device) to ever compound in the manner shown in the video.

Nevermind the fact that combining two waves CHANGES the properties of said wave (I even wrote a wave simulator program doing just that in Turbo Pascal back in high school). A combination of a small and a medium laser would (under ideal circumstances described above) create a combined laser, not two seperate "projectiles". It could also cause the resulting wave to amplify itself, then cancel itself out, then amplify itself... ((Side note: isn't that how pulse lasers work?))


Its been a while since I did any work in optics, so if I have made any blatant mistakes please feel free to bash me for them :P

Thoughts?

TT


Sci-fi game. Tell me you aren't shocked?

#27 kojdog

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Posted 19 July 2012 - 10:32 AM

I applaud your *** burgers. Keep up the good work - interesting read!

#28 Damion Wolf

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Posted 19 July 2012 - 10:32 AM

Sounds like somebody needs to get laid. That'll take care of your assburger thing.

#29 Skyefox

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Posted 19 July 2012 - 10:32 AM

So wait....colored lasers (which are there so you know if you hit anything, sort of like tracers) bothers you, but 50 tons of mech propelled by 5 tons of propulsion is absolutely nominal?

#30 Morashtak

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Posted 19 July 2012 - 10:32 AM

Let's see...

"Every BattleMech comes equipped with 10 heat sinks as part of the design that do not take up tonnage (but they make take up Critical Slots...)." (per CBT Master Rules Revised Edition)

Internals weigh 10% of a Mech's total weight - So a 20tonner gets 10 "free" heat sinks that weigh a total of 2 tons while a 100tonner's HS weigh 10 tons.

Yep, makes sense to me! Lasers that shoot rainbows make just as much sense.

I attribute it to Unobtainium - Everything that doesn't make sense is made from highly refined Unobtainium. Yep, just repeat after me "It's all Unobtainium". There now, aren't you feeling a lot better?

#31 TheCerpent

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Posted 19 July 2012 - 10:38 AM

The lasers are actually non-visible. The colors are a graphical representation generated by your targeting computer to assist with aim and tracking nearby attacks based on sensor data.

There. Problem solved. :P

#32 Tierloc

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Posted 19 July 2012 - 10:39 AM

Maybe it's just the converter and quality they used to compress the video.

#33 Skyefox

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Posted 19 July 2012 - 10:43 AM

Self diagnosed Asperger's. That's what we all need. I am lazy and have difficulty playing pretend sometimes, but at erratic intervals. I HAVE ASPERGERS!


Seems legit.

#34 Brenden

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Posted 19 July 2012 - 10:47 AM

View PostMichael Cerpent, on 19 July 2012 - 10:38 AM, said:

The lasers are actually non-visible. The colors are a graphical representation generated by your targeting computer to assist with aim and tracking nearby attacks based on sensor data.

There. Problem solved. :P

Then why can regular people in the books see them, without the use of a computer?

#35 WardenWolf

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Posted 19 July 2012 - 10:48 AM

The concern here is a reasonable one. Forget the colors for a moment: why are multiple lasers shot from the same part of a mech (but not the same barrel / emitter) overlapping? In the videos of the Swayback (Hunchie with 6 lasers in place of the AC20) we see six distinct laser beams from that portion of the torso... but on the Centurion we see one beam, despite two emitters being visible on the center torso of the mech.

Why is this? Perhaps it is just still in beta, and not finalized... but if this is the way the Devs have planned, I would like to know the reason :P

If the overlapping went away, then there would be no blending of color... problem solved!

#36 Prat

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Posted 19 July 2012 - 10:48 AM

View PostMichael Cerpent, on 19 July 2012 - 10:38 AM, said:

The lasers are actually non-visible. The colors are a graphical representation generated by your targeting computer to assist with aim and tracking nearby attacks based on sensor data.

There. Problem solved. :P


Best Answer!

#37 DeathsWelcome

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Posted 19 July 2012 - 10:50 AM

I think everyone has been "troll'd". LoL :-P

#38 Brenden

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Posted 19 July 2012 - 10:52 AM

View PostWardenWolf, on 19 July 2012 - 10:48 AM, said:

The concern here is a reasonable one. Forget the colors for a moment: why are multiple lasers shot from the same part of a mech (but not the same barrel / emitter) overlapping? In the videos of the Swayback (Hunchie with 6 lasers in place of the AC20) we see six distinct laser beams from that portion of the torso... but on the Centurion we see one beam, despite two emitters being visible on the center torso of the mech.

Why is this? Perhaps it is just still in beta, and not finalized... but if this is the way the Devs have planned, I would like to know the reason :P

If the overlapping went away, then there would be no blending of color... problem solved!

One barrel was ontop of the other, so all we saw was the top barrel of the laser firering.

#39 Solis Obscuri

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Posted 19 July 2012 - 10:52 AM

The red/blue beams overlapping to appear purple makes sense, IMO. I will admit that the two green beams coming out yellow is a little weird.

#40 Veevslav

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Posted 19 July 2012 - 10:57 AM

View PostTommytools, on 19 July 2012 - 09:40 AM, said:

I know this is a game and there is a large element of suspension of disbelief, but I have a real issue with the way laser colours are shown in the centurion vid. Even more so with the given explanation in the locked thread. (I would have posted this there if it hadn't been locked.)

Lasers being visible?... Ok, can live with that, battlefields tend to be very smoky/dusty environments after all.

But lasers compounding to different colours? ... Maybe its my aspergers acting up, but that REALLY rubs me the wrong way...

Lasers are coherent light, meaning it is VERY directed and focused. To compound 2 different wavelengths they HAVE to be travelling parallel in the exact same plane. To get the beams to travel in parallel and close enough to affect eachother they HAVE to share a focusing device (lens or mirror), which makes it impossible for two seperate and distinct lasers (IE not sharing a focusing device) to ever compound in the manner shown in the video.

Nevermind the fact that combining two waves CHANGES the properties of said wave (I even wrote a wave simulator program doing just that in Turbo Pascal back in high school). A combination of a small and a medium laser would (under ideal circumstances described above) create a combined laser, not two seperate "projectiles". It could also cause the resulting wave to amplify itself, then cancel itself out, then amplify itself... ((Side note: isn't that how pulse lasers work?))


Its been a while since I did any work in optics, so if I have made any blatant mistakes please feel free to bash me for them :P

Thoughts?

TT


Lasers can currently be assigned different colors.....
As to them being visible.... If we create steam the laser is easily noticeable... Now take our current lasers that are weak pathetic things and increase the power output to about 50000 times and watch as air with minimal moisture gets steamed instantly from it passing through..... There you have visible lasers of different colors based on the lasers original color........





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