Player Bubble and Deaggregation
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OK some figures from F4108
Aircraft…. 19nm
Helos … 8nm
Navel… 8nm
Ground… 4nm
Sams… Range+10%
Objectives…49nmOriginal defaults had Objectives & Air @ 15nm.
Going on a nostalgia trip, I think I even have an old log book here too.
If I fly it I might “taint” those great memories of wonder & bedazzlement.
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Boobles have been explained to a point……search Google, maybe Global Falcon forums.
I’ll try to dig up the Original developer explanation of their use in VU-2. I have it somewhere.
On a short note, it seems we are associating Entity deagg\reagg from the 2D lists to the 3D bubble.tired demer
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Boobles have been explained to a point……search Google, maybe Global Falcon forums.
I’ll try to dig up the Original developer explanation of their use in VU-2. I have it somewhere.
On a short note, it seems we are associating Entity deagg\reagg from the 2D lists to the 3D bubble.tired demer
?? Lost me
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There are many bubbles 2d 3d. Demmer I’m sure here we are talking mostly on 3d.
The brain mess up kicks in cause IIRC when some units are outside the 3d bubble and the deagregated settings are used. Meaning AI don’t deagregate locked targets if the user or host doesn’t do it.It’s very complex to put it in just a few lines. I-hawk or someone else made a detailed post IIRC that gives some insight to the complex architecture of the subject.
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Gents,
Please go here in your install for now:
X:\Falcon BMS 4.32\Docs\Falcon 4 Legacy Manuals\2 - Realism Patch 5
and start reading at page 39 to get a better understanding of Boobles in Falcon……Froggy did a pretty good job of it.
I’m still trying to find Carters post\PM? ICRCATM from 6 years ago……I’m afraid it is lost…LOL!!!demer
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I’m still trying to find Carters post\PM? ICRCATM from 6 years ago……I’m afraid it is lost…LOL!!!
demer
His Campaign Manifesto??
C9
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For what its worth here is part of a FAQ from by Glenn Kletzky aka “Sleepdoc” & Eric Marlow aka “Snacko” (iBeta) Yes its dated:
11. Bubbles, Labels, and Cursors, Oh My!!
There seems to always be some confusion with people when they use “near” labels vs. “far” labels. In 1.08, it will be even more of an imperative that people understand the difference. It’s no secret but it is a mystery to many people. And frankly, I don’t think I would have understood it if the guy who actually programmed it hadn’t explained it to me. Twice. Ok, maybe 4 times. <g>In order to understand the very distinct differences between near labels and far labels, it helps to understand the concept of the “bubble” in Falcon 4.0. As a shameless plug for my old articles on Combatsim, I refer you to the second interview I had with Kevin Klemmick (the guy who did a lot of bubble programming for F4) by reading the old “bubble article” I wrote a while back. You can find it at: http://www.combatsim.com/htm/jan99/f4-camp2.htm It is a good review (not because of me, because of the guy I was interviewing) of exactly what a bubble is and how it works. It’s a good primer read to understanding bubbles in this sim.
Things inside your bubble are things within a fixed radial distance around you. Objects inside the bubble are important, because the game actually bothers to draw in each object, and actually assigns an individual AI brain to each of the things it draws.
In other words, a battalion of tanks that ARE NOT inside your bubble are only tracked as a single entity, not as individual objects. This single entity “not-in-your-bubble” battalion of tanks still has a AI brain, but it has a singular one. One brain controls the entire battalion, and if it “fights”, it only does so in the mind of the computer, not on your screen. If it takes losses, those losses are considered as “percentages” of its total. .
As soon as this battalion (lets say 64 tanks) enters your bubble, each of the individual tanks in that battalion is actually drawn on the screen - they are also referred to by the programmers as being “de-aggregated” into their individual parts. If while those tanks were not in your bubble, and in “aggregated” form, they sustained 20% losses, then when they entered your bubble, the de-aggregation event would only draw 80% of the original 64 tanks because the rest are considered dead. Also, and more importantly, when these tanks enter your bubble, each of them gets an INDIVIDUAL AI BRAIN attached to them. This means that the CPU cycles are getting sucked down like Kool-aid on a southern porch. Over the FLOT, the action gets fast and furious, as there are so many AI brains to control. This is the primary reason why frame rates take a hit over the FLOT.
Near labels (SHF-L) places labels on “objects” - aircraft and tanks and trucks and missiles etc. - that exist IN YOUR BUBBLE.
Far labels (CTL-L) are for objects that currently exist outside of your bubble, and only in the “tracking mind” of your computer. These “aggregated” entities are not yet “de-aggregated” - not yet drawn on your screen as polygons etc, and are not yet functioning as individual AI brains.
Don’t be fooled. A flight of four MiG-29s may only show up as a single blip 50 miles on your radar because they are actually being treated by the game as a “aggregate” single brain flight, but they CAN and they WILL shoot at you. And by the way, all threats like in-flight SAMs and missiles are treated as “in your bubble” no matter what distance they are fired from.This leads to much confusion on the player’s part. Sometimes people complain of phantom missiles - missiles that appear out of nowhere. Actually, what they are seeing is a missile being fired from a flight outside their bubble. Since they have near labels on, they only see the
missiles, and not the flight that fired them. Eventually, when that flight enters their bubble, they will see the individual planes. If you point your radar toward the missiles, you will see the single blip on your radar that represents the “aggregate” flight that fired the missile, because
flights and tanks outside your bubble still appear on their respective radars. This leads me closer to the point of this article - man I can be longwinded, but this stuff takes words to explain clearly.So why am I rapping my chops over this. Well, because when you get 1.08 and you decide to play the ground war and do a little mud moving and tank busting with GBUs and Mavericks, it is very confusing if you attempt to play with far labels on. TURN FAR LABELS OFF. This is because far labels, with respect to ground targets, are not precise with respect to their location. For example, with far labels on, you might see a thing labeled “HART artillery” out in the distance. This is the far label designation for what ultimately will be labeled as a D-30 when it gets “de-aggregated” and into your bubble.
I am about to get a bit technical, so take a breath and hang in there with me.
There is a little know thing called a “secondary cursor bubble” which is working VERY WELL in both single and multiplayer right now in 1.08. Let me explain. Let’s say the bubble for ground entities around your airplane is 10 miles. But you decide to go into GBU-24 boresight mode and you point your HUD TD box to some point on the ground 40 miles in front of you because
you see a FAR LABEL out there which reads “HART ARTILLERY”. When you put your TD HUD box right on the label, the label disappears! Why? Well, because the locations of things outside your bubble are imprecise - those d-30s are near that HART label, just not right under it.Objects that are too far away to see are tracked in a positional fashion, and very imprecisely. Those D-30s are with a few miles of where the far label is, but not exactly. This technique of not tracking the location to the inch of campaign aggregated objects saves TONS of CPU cycles so you can fight the war inside your bubble with tight tracking. And when you point your cursor at the ground somewhere outside your bubble, a magic trick occurs. ANYTHING IN A 1 MILE RADUIS AROUND YOUR RADAR GROUND CURSORS, NO MATTER HOW FAR OUTSIDE YOUR BUBBLE THEY MAY BE, GET THEIR OWN BUBBLE CALLED THE SECONDARY CURSOR BUBBLE.
Welcome to your first introduction of the “secondary cursor bubble”.
This secondary cursor bubble forces things like SAM sites you pick up and target in your HTS (HARM Targeting System), or tank columns you see in GMT, to suddenly and completely de-aggregate when you place those respective radar cursors on top of them. THIS IS GOOD and did not always work right in prior versions of F4. It works very well indeed in 1.08.
So what is the point of all this? The point is that if you want to move mud, DO NOT USE FAR LABELS. Use near labels only. If you want to find targets outside your 8 mile ground target bubble (the air target bubble is about 20 miles and for ground targets about 8 miles … these are max settings), then you should lock them up on GMT first. You will start to notice that when you lock a single GMT radar blip 40 miles out on GMT and slave your GBU cam to the radar and suddenly, the “single blip” you saw on the radar becomes (expands into) a “line of blips”. That is because the single blip was a line of tanks that was not yet de-aggregated. When you locked it up and pointed your GBU or Maverick cam at it, it fell underneath your secondary cursor bubble, and all 64 tanks (or less depending on your slider setting in options called “object density”) became visible. You forced them to de-aggregate and become visible, and to be drawn by placing them underneath you SECONDARY CURSOR BUBBLE.
But more importantly, their labels will appear even though you are only using near labels. This is because near labels are for things in your bubble, and things forced to appear by your secondary cursor bubble are within your bubble. In multiplayer, you need to wait a second or so for the labels to appear or disappear when you stabilize your ground cursor, because the message must be processed “over the wire”. But it will process. This is quicker in single player of course.
So what is the moral of the story? The moral of the story is that whenever you are mud moving, especially in multiplayer games, it is far better and far less confusing if you only use near labels. Far labels only add to the confusion about where the targets really are. Use your GMT and GM radar to locate and ground stabilize your radar on your targets - you will find the near labels of your targets as they should.
Side note: The programmers of F4 admitted to me that they once considered removing far labels as a option in the game because of the confusion potential for the public that it could cause. They decided to leave it, as well as many other things, in the philosophy that more options and futures are better. I’m hoping this write-up will help make their decision the right one. "</g>
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Well, just for the record. I got what I needed out of this thread.
I want to know if I could use a in-game 3D opfor jet on Lemnos island to force deaggregation for enemy units, and I can! so I am happy.
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Digressing.
Please don’t say on TS3 during gameplay “oh they musta been outside your bubble, hence breakage”, nothing breaks immersion in gameplay like mentions of bubble.
Well, just for the record. I got what I needed out of this thread.
I want to know if I could use a in-game 3D opfor jet on Lemnos island to force deaggregation for enemy units, and I can! so I am happy.
Only humans cause deaggregation. Deaggregating jet due to proximity won’t cause mud and other less-bubble-priority targets to be deaggregated.
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Digressing.
Please don’t say on TS3 during gameplay “oh they musta been outside your bubble, hence breakage”, nothing breaks immersion in gameplay like mentions of bubble.
Only humans cause deaggregation. Deaggregating jet due to proximity won’t cause mud and other less-bubble-priority targets to be deaggregated.
I think he meant its gonna be the server jet in 3D at lemnos. Not sure if having the server be on OPFOR is a great idea?
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Just a note on drawing objects inside the bubble. if bubble is 10 miles and objects lod distance is 5 miles, then the object will be drawn when u enter the 5 miles. I don’t know how this works on radar. Meaning: I am at 9 miles so the column of 64 tanks is deagregated but on each tank the lod distance is 5 miles and they have spacing of half a mile from eachother will I see in my radar screen the whole column? When I will get in 4.4 miles I will see only the first in the column?
also same goes for tgp or wpn page.In visual tests I did with features taxiing on taxiway lod distance works fine. What changes this is using zoom. When zoom is used u see all features regardless of lod distance settings.
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I think he meant its gonna be the server jet in 3D at lemnos. Not sure if having the server be on OPFOR is a great idea?
Good question and have never really explored all the pros & cons, worthy of a separate thread.
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Good question and have never really explored all the pros & cons, worthy of a separate thread.
I would rather hijack this one as it part of the evolving conversation, but yes this was my intention.
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I would rather hijack this one as it part of the evolving conversation, but yes this was my intention.
well… what happens if the server gets blown up?
The server jet, I mean, not the actual server itself. I think I can guess what happens if the server itself gets blown up.
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well… what happens if the server gets blown up?
The server jet, I mean, not the actual server itself. I think I can guess what happens if the server itself gets blown up.
I don’t know. I was wondering that too. I mean, he IS still in the 3D world…
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well… what happens if the server gets blown up?
The server jet, I mean, not the actual server itself. I think I can guess what happens if the server itself gets blown up.
I don’t know. I was wondering that too. I mean, he IS still in the 3D world…
If you’re the host of a multi-player game (i.e. you are the server), what happens to the rest of the MP game when you get shot down/crash, etc.? Nothing …… until you leave the 3D world.
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OK some figures from F4108
Aircraft…. 19nm
Helos … 8nm
Navel… 8nm
Ground… 4nm
Sams… Range+10%
Objectives…49nmThis numbers aren’t relevant anymore.
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This numbers aren’t relevant anymore.
That’s why I mentioned they were from 108.
It was there to show bubbly type and how they have changed.
Thanks
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As for Arty’s post - there’s no sense in “the bubble is X nm”. There’s sense in “bubble for Y is X nm”.