17 replies to this topic

[Hubis]

Right now, there's almost never a reason to play MWO not using Thermal vision.

Yes, this is true even on "warm" maps like Caustic -- once any sort of fighting happens, mechs still pop out clearly over the background heat.

Mechs, even those at "baseline" temperatures show up clearly against the background at ranges as far as you would care to spot/shoot at them. The theoretical disadvantage of Thermal is that it's vulnerable to heat plumes from the environment/destroyed mechs, and the world is not as clearly rendered with respect to terrain details; however, because the world is colored/textured with a decent amount of fidelity, this never really becomes an issue.

A very effective, simple "fix" to this would be to:

• Remove the textures from surfaces in Thermal view. The roughness of a material shouldn't really affect how it appears in thermal imaging.
  
• Make all surfaces in the world show up as the same "temperature" (with a few exceptions for terrain features). First off, it's physically accurate -- without some sort of generative heat source, inert objects in the world are going to come to equilibrium with the surrounding environment fairly quickly. Furthermore, this temperature is going to be identical to the surrounding air -- i.e. the sky box -- making it much harder to deduce the surrounding environment based on the horizon.
  
• Make warm maps appear "warmer" so that minimally active mechs are hidden in the background. Using thermal on Caustic is annoying, but it's not really ineffective by any stretch of the imagination.

This isn't because I hate Thermal or anything -- I think it's a pretty awesome feature, and it looks pretty fantastic! But it's way too useful, and doesn't have nearly enough drawbacks. Besides, it makes the game you're engineers are working on look far less attractive because we're often hiding some of the best features. These changes would have the following effects:

• Night Vision would become the clear choice for dark maps, with all the entailed drawbacks. Right now Thermal is usually superior because you can see practically as well, and for a much greater distance.
  
• Thermal would remain useful for scouting, but as something you switch to when you want a better view rather than as a constant baseline view, because you'd lose situational awareness of the terrain.
  
• It would allow room for enhancement by modules, giving you more room for player customization down the road. Say, for example, a mech at 15% heat were impossible to pick out from the background on Caustic Valley; however, with the Enhanced Thermal Vision module that threshold becomes 10% or 5%. Or a module that gives you Thermal in a Picture-in-Picture view would suddenly become fantastically useful, as it would let you remain aware of the terrain while using Thermal View (not to mention looking super cool).

Edited by Hubis, 22 January 2013 - 07:11 AM.

[Hauser]

Agreed. Thermal is a little too useful right now and should provide less information about the terrain. Though I'd hope this is put off until after ECM has been changed. Right now, when going up against mechs under ECM, it's the only way to get a good sighting at range.

[Ken Fury]

Hubis making again one of the best posts on the forums. Another factor adding to myself using too much thermal is ECM, since enemy Mechs are easily identified on Thermal while normale and Night Vision don't give the same information. Thus even on Forest Snow, Forest Colony, River City (+Night) and Frozen City Day/Night Thermal reigns supreme.
Allowing normal target lock but still preventing Missile locks of far away targets would make it more viable to use the normal view mode (and make Sensor range modules + BAP far more useful).

Edited by Tank Boy Ken, 22 January 2013 - 07:37 AM.

[Chronojam]

We had a discussion about this before, and all of these points are very solid and would contribute to a better experience. One more adjustment that might be fun to manipulate would be a sort of max range, or falloff, for the effect after which things blur together a bit. Battlefield 3 added something like this to their IRNV system, making it great for close and mid-range fighting where the enemy shows up as a bright silhouette, but a bit of a detriment for spotting targets at long range where it's all just a mushy darker background color.

Anyhow, hopefully far-distant mechs won't be so easy to immediately see "for free" the way they are right now. It hurts the utility of using sensor range increasing modules because on the current maps with only 8 mechs per side, it is just as important for a scout to see which general direction the bulk of the enemy is going without the need for a lock.

[Pycckuu]

MWO is a beautiful game and the developers put a ton of work to make it look fantastic. However, I spend most of my time in thermal view because it's just THAT powerful. Even on daylight maps with good visibility there are no disadvantages to using thermal.

[Bhael Fire]

Yeah thermal is the optimal optic system right now...trumping normal and night vision almost always.

I'd change it like this:

Normal Vision: Keep as is; Change nothing.
Thermal Vision: Make thermal vision a module that must be unlocked.
Night Vision: Increase the fidelity of the image, but decrease the range it can be used. That is, within 50 meters vision is almost as clear as normal vision, 50-200 meters it gradually fades into complete darkness.

[Agent CraZy DiP]

I'm just going to leave this here...

Edit: and here...

Edited by Agent CraZy DiP, 22 January 2013 - 11:44 AM.

[Hubis]

Agent CraZy DiP, on 22 January 2013 - 11:43 AM, said:

I'm just going to leave this here...

Edit: and here...

Is the argument that "real" thermal vision is just as good or better than what we have in MWO? Because in general, I'd agree -- but for the sake of practicality, it seems like you would currently ALWAYS want to be using thermal if you could which might be realistic, but doesn't necessarily make the game better. It is a tough balance to strike.

[Agent CraZy DiP]

Having it on is better. Plain and simple. Which is why I made a post suggesting critical optic hits that break thermals or nightvision scopes. Honestly though... That's just it... It should be a scope and not the whole screen that's in Thermals. Make it a larger bubble or square around your Cross-hair or only when you go into the first zoom so it's actually like you're looking down a scope.

[blinkin]

thermal has it's own severe issues.

it may be great for long range but if you are in close it blows.

• there is massive blurring for anything that moves across the screen quickly, this also makes navigating terrain much harder with mechs that move at a decent speed.
  
• there is almost no depth perception so you cannot tell which mech is in front if there are two or more close together
  
• it is almost impossible to determine facing so precission fire on components is at best hard
  
• many maps have extra heat sources that interfere with sight and all maps fill up with burning mech corpses

i will stick to standard and nightvision for close range fighting.

[canned wolf]

Beat me to it.

[SectionZ]

A few patches ago I used to be able to pick out distant mechs without Thermal vision while scouting. I'm not sure what has changed, but now at those same distances I can't see Jack nor CoC disapproved word. Everything seems more blurry than it used to be on Forest for example, and I always have Motion Blur turned off.

I used to only use Heat vision when it was clearly required (all that snow blowing around in Frozen, dark but not that dark caves in Forest). But now I'm using it to pick up the slack in visual clarity. Bright red PC Gamer skin assault mechs standing out in the open on a Lake in the middle of the day, should not be hard to pick out.

Still, even then I got to agree with the OP. I'm using Heat vision as a crutch, as are many other players. Changing it up would give us an incentive to improve our game (and, hopefully, an incentive for PGI to make things less drab and blurry on a clear sunlit day).

[Firewuff]

Real world Thermal vision is actually quite good ane youcan see a lot of detail. For example.

http://1.bp.blogspot...353_600x450.jpg

And in game it is good for spotting enemy movements at a long distance but you can't tell what they are at all. In a close firefight it is useless. I cant tell if I am firing on my team on aan enemy most of the time. Heat plumes can have you firing into empty air and where there are fires/hot spots you can be blinded.

It is well balanced and really doesnt need a change

[focuspark]

Firewuff, on 23 January 2013 - 10:04 PM, said:

Real world Thermal vision is actually quite good ane youcan see a lot of detail. For example.

http://1.bp.blogspot...353_600x450.jpg

And in game it is good for spotting enemy movements at a long distance but you can't tell what they are at all. In a close firefight it is useless. I cant tell if I am firing on my team on aan enemy most of the time. Heat plumes can have you firing into empty air and where there are fires/hot spots you can be blinded.

It is well balanced and really doesnt need a change

notice the complete lack of detail at the base of the buildings? mw:o thermal needs this.

[Corvus Antaka]

I like this idea. Thermal Vision is too powerful right now, and your post is dead on.

One of the disadvantages of Thermal imaging is that

"Only surface thermal fluctuations will be detected by thermal imaging. This is different from X-ray devices, which can "see" through walls."

http://www.ehow.com/...ng-cameras.html

Makes me wonder if maybe we could apply this to mechs, Why are the mechs legs generating heat? the arms? Only when lasers are fired...or when that mechs heat is up. But would this be a nightmare to code? probably?

I like the terrain drawback - its already potentially there, but amplifying that & combining it with makeing cold mechs much harder to see and hot mechs more aparent could be very helpful and interesting if doable.

[focuspark]

Change the textures when user is viewing with thermal vision. Do not allow me to read text on the billboards when I'm using thermal vision.

To make thermal good but not OP, it might be best to make the whole thing more blocky looking so that all detail is lost.

[MaddMaxx]

Not sure if it would be doable, but Thermal should be a tool to detect the enemy at longer range, but not be useful for actually shooting at them. As noted above, make the draw back of thermal be that if used to fire your weapons at long range targets, your own silhouette would begin to glow @5x times the normal basic neutral if used just to call in grid locations and or direction of travel.

So yes, fire your weapons with it active, but doing so will expose your own self to even easier enemy spotting, locking and or return fire.

Edited by MaddMaxx, 24 January 2013 - 10:59 AM.

[focuspark]

MaddMaxx, on 24 January 2013 - 10:58 AM, said:

Not sure if it would be doable, but Thermal should be a tool to detect the enemy at longer range, but not be useful for actually shooting at them. As noted above, make the draw back of thermal be that if used to fire your weapons at long range targets, your own silhouette would begin to glow @5x times the normal basic neutral if used just to call in grid locations and or direction of travel.

So yes, fire your weapons with it active, but doing so will expose your own self to even easier enemy spotting, locking and or return fire.

If all of the ground were the same color with no shading, you'd have to use both thermal and normal vision to line up the shot AND thermal would be useless in close.