Solved Regarding the Visibility of Soldiers
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Forgive the wordy post – I posted a TL;DR below.
I’ve been working on a theater that allows helicopters to be flyable with a VTOL flight model. It was suddenly very apparent during my low-level flying that infantry were completely missing when we flew over them. One MP test-flight turned into an investigation into the infantry issue: I had someone in 2D confirm where the soldiers were. The battalion itself was visible to him in 2D in a position directly underneath me. He could recon the battalion, but he couldn’t see any models for the soldiers in the Recon view. I couldn’t see them in 3D as I flew right on top of them. This led me to think about the issue of soldiers in BMS not being visible for me.
They are missing in Recon, even if I recon an SA-14 directly and zoom in on it. I’ve flown over infantry, as mentioned, and they are missing in 3D as well. Manpads have almost always seem to have been launched from voids of nothingness. I’ve always thought this was intentional, that the attention to the detail of soldiers was just not a priority since we fly pretty fast to notice a man on the ground. I’ve seen soldiers before in 3D in 4.33, but they looked almost like low poly trees that stood around vehicles they were attached to. I believe I saw some soldiers in 3rd party theaters, such as Kuwait. I seem to recall that the 4.34 trailer showed soldiers on a jog. More recently, I can’t seem to remember seeing a single soldier in BMS 4.35 prior to this investigation.
I edited the DB of my theater to assign SA-2 models to the SA-7 and SA-14. This worked; they were visible in recon and in 3D. This led me to think that something must be wrong with the models assigned to the SA-7 and SA-14. Checking the DB confirmed that SA-7s and SA-14s had the same model – a soldier with a rocket launcher of some sort. This model was the most detailed I seem to ever recall in BMS of a soldier, but I can’t say I remember ever seeing it in 3D.
I decided to try a workaround to our problem. I reverted the models back to their originals, and make the first weapon of the SA-7 and SA-14 each visible so we could, perhaps, spot the weapon visually at least. In the DB VCD XML files, I changed the following from 0 to 1 for the SA-7 and SA-14:
<VisibleFlags>1</VisibleFlags>
The SA-7 and SA-14 were still not visible in recon, but to my surprise the soldiers were 100% visible in 3D!
In this screenshot, we can see this little dude aiming at me. Not only that, but by changing this across the board to all infantry (ie. Land, Vehicle, Foot), I can see friendly and enemy solders alike. Manpads no longer originate from an invisible source. I can actually creep up on a battalion and spot the soldiers with the TGP (thanks to thermal) hiding among the trees. This is a gamechanger for a theater that attempts to get as close to a helicopter flight model as possible, where hovering and scanning terrain is important. Not only that, but it seems I may be able to tell if they are aiming at me or just chilling.
Forgive my ignorance, but it seems to me that these soldiers’ models are somehow being interpreted as weapons. This is why they don’t show up in Recon, just like how the missile on an SA-2 doesn’t show up in Recon. If this is the case that the SA-7 vehicle is invisible and the weapon is the model, this makes sense. The DB seems to show the solider as the model for the vehicle itself, so this seems to contradict that theory. In conclusion, I just know this change has caused soliders to be visible for me. I have no idea why, and it doesn’t fully make sense to me.
I would appreciate it if some other people could confirm my findings. I’ve been editing a lot, and I fully admit I could have made a ton of mistakes here.
TL;DR:
- I don’t remember seeing soldiers in 3D in BMS other than low-poly, tree-like soldiers, except perhaps in 3rd party theaters.
- I don’t remember seeing SA-7 or SA-14 soldiers ever.
- I edited the SA-7 and SA-14 vehicles in my theater to have their first weapon be visible.
- The soldiers completely show up now in 3D with various animations. The battlefield is alive with troops!
- These troops are still missing from recon.
- Am I hallucinating? Is stock BMS missing these detailed, visible soldiers?
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Should be fixed next release (at least visible in 3D)
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@bibleclinger Quite the find! I’m amazed this hasn’t had more replies.
I don’t remember seeing these units before either. Would be interested to hear the rational behind hiding them, if it was indeed intentional.
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I agree with your findings. I spent countless flights trying to spot light infantry without success. Seems like a db issue to me.
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@Bad-Boy could have a look at it…
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@maxwaldorf
yes ok, I’ll take a look when time permit -
It could be amazing to actually be able to spot troops on the ground, not just related to air defense. So for instance an Infantry Batallion with 17 AK47 squads and 4 mortar crew would not be invisible. It would give a new immersion level to be able to take in the scale of the operations that happen
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This screenshot comes from our first “event” flight on this theater with 1 human GCI, 8 human F-16 pilots, and 2 human AH-64D pilots. The TGP has captured a vehicle from the SA-2 battalion that the AH-64Ds were tasked with destroying. The SA-14 soldiers are visible, standing next to the targeted vehicle.
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@bibleclinger said in Regarding the Visibility of Soldiers:
I saw some soldiers in 3rd party theaters, such as Kuwait.
In this theater (128 Kuwait), infantry battalions are set up differently from the standard BMS. Perhaps this is where the differences come from.
But, for the visibility of the infantry in 3d, there was no need to expose the visibility beads for the weapon, it was enough that all infantry battalion/divizion would simply correspond to the script "0)_foot_gun.veh.
Or movie type = “foot” instead of “Low air”. -
@spbgoro That is very interesting!
From foot_gun.veh:
#----------------------------------------------------- # Foot Squad Data #----------------------------------------------------- FootSquadDataNumModes 4 FootSquadDataModeSwitchIdx 10 FootSquadDataAnimationSwitchIdx 11 FootSquadDataNumSwitchStatesAiming 3 FootSquadDataNumSwitchStatesWalking 16 FootSquadDataNumSwitchStatesRunning 16 FootSquadDataNumSwitchStatesStanding 2 FootSquadDataCycleTimeWalking 70 FootSquadDataCycleTimeRunning 47
From foot_missile.veh:
#----------------------------------------------------- # Foot Squad Data #----------------------------------------------------- FootSquadDataNumModes 4 FootSquadDataModeSwitchIdx 10 FootSquadDataAnimationSwitchIdx 11 FootSquadDataNumSwitchStatesAiming 2 FootSquadDataNumSwitchStatesWalking 16 FootSquadDataNumSwitchStatesRunning 16 FootSquadDataNumSwitchStatesStanding 1 FootSquadDataCycleTimeWalking 70 FootSquadDataCycleTimeRunning 47
The only differences I see are FootSquadDataNumSwitchStatesAiming and FootSquadDataNumSwitchStatesStanding.
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Would be nice, even when at speeds of a fighter jet, visibilty of troops is not-so-relevant. Can confirm they’re in the 4.34 trialer:
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@bibleclinger said in Regarding the Visibility of Soldiers:
Единственные различия, которые я вижу, - это FootSquadDataNumSwitchStatesAiming и FootSquadDataNumSwitchStatesStanding.
Oh, you’re looking through a text editor.
You can see it more clearly through the BMS editor.Here is an example from 128 Kuwait (MidEast)
All infantry battalions (their index numbers) are highlighted in red (in other theaters they may be called differently, but the index will be the same).
By selecting each of them, you can check the “type of their movement”.For example, when some battalions had a movement type of “Low air”, these battalions did not engage in the battle in 3d mode.
Those battalion units that showed animation - They just stomped / ran next to enemy vehicles.
However, they did not pay attention to each other. -
Should be fixed next release (at least visible in 3D)
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Thanks! Excellent news.