Gunner = Arcade Action Cam for the 12 yr olds?

[Noddie]

Do we even know how gunning will work?

Will you be aiming manually, or designating targets for the ship's automated systems to attack?

Seems to me option 2 makes most sense.

I know a lot of people have concerns, I do too, but let's see how it works in beta. FD do listen. For example, taking commodities out of engineer recipes for one thing, dropping the cost of the vulture for another.

Whether I can see them dropping a major game feature is another question. But they could extend the beta whilst tweaking it.

 

[A D]

Putting the arcade/immersion debate to one side, does anyone know whether targeting and destroying the weapons module (which can already be done in game) will also disable the combat camera (i.e. no turret, no combat camera view)?

 

[Max Stingray]

I have only read half of the thred (it's long) and if we exclude the trolls and insults there appears to be three distinct issues being discussed that are sometimes mixed up.

The first, is the simplest to address: with multiple turrets in different locatons and different firing arcs a SRV style view is not possible unless one switches views which would make following targets quite difficult. Note that the SRV turret is stabilzed as well as this make things a lot easier. This is what modern MBT (tanks) do (at high speed) and what battleships turrets did when navies still have battleships. I think most people agree with this approach.

The second and third issues are the one that are often mixed up and by this I mean the 360 view and it's location.

We all know that it is already possible to create photospheres by sticking multiple images together and even create artificial images from multiple sesnors (like IR, range finders etc ... ). This is indeed implemented in various military platforms. Cameras and sensors can be dotted around the hull with enough redundancy to be able to withstand significant damage before degrading by leaving blind spots (Degradation due to damage would be a nice touch but it is beside the point now) They are small and inexpensive even today so it is easy to assume that that what is happening. Some people would like a view that looks less life-like, but personally I am ok with how it is, it is entirely plausible an consitent with the SRV approach.

The location of the photosphere is, in my opinion, the real problem as the center point is off ship, and whilts it is in principle possible to stich and project the images from the hull camera with respect to any point even external to the ship what is not possible is to render what is not visible from the actual cameras or sensors. This would be equivalent to being able to render the dark side of the moon by only using images from earthbound telescopes. It is not mathematically possible and this is what makes me feel uneasy about the gunner view. It feels as wrong as sound in space and it is unnecessary. I would prefer if the view was centered within the ship with a holgraphic rappresentation of the ship attitude for situation awareness as per the example some other commander has put together with Photoshop. I dont think this would change the playability and situation awareneas and it would be more realistic (and immersive, yes I have used THAT word), the only drawback is that the gunner would not be able to see how beautiful the ship is ...

Why do I care? I do because as many on this forum I would like a game (I called it a game not a SIM) with as much simulation-like features, realism and deep mechanics as possible to give the illusion of actually flying a spaceship whilst still being a game one can master in a reasonable amount of time and have fun and this is a fine line made of many compromises. I am sure FD knows this very well and we should keep voicing our concerns to help them strike the right balance.

BTW: I get my realism fix flying with Orbiter Space Flight Simulator, anyone that thinks ED is a sim should try and dock or land using Orbiter and will quickly realise that without some of the concession to realism ED has made space dogfighting would not be possible or fun. Nevertheless there should not be more concession than what is necessary.

 

[dumbo]

The location of the photosphere is, in my opinion, the real problem as the center point is off ship, and whilts it is in principle possible to stich and project the images from the hull camera with respect to any point even external to the ship what is not possible is to render what is not visible from the actual cameras or sensors.

We have photos (from probes) of the dark side of the moon. We also know the shape of the moon. We can measure the current lighting on the near-side of the moon. We know what's happening on the dark side of the moon (nothing). We know the composition of the moon, hence the reflectivity etc. Hence, we could create an accurate representation of the dark side of the moon.

In Elite to "know what's happening", we look at the radar and HUD. The HUD knows the orientation of a ship, the radar knows the position, whether it's firing, whether the shields are up or down etc.

There's no reason that the ship's computer couldn't generate an accurate full-colour view from a virtual camera. It would probably have quirks, maybe asteroids would sometimes shift in shape, and damage would shift on a hull... but with a powerful enough computer this seems viable.

 

[Nuarb]

The location of the photosphere is, in my opinion, the real problem as the center point is off ship, and whilts it is in principle possible to stich and project the images from the hull camera with respect to any point even external to the ship what is not possible is to render what is not visible from the actual cameras or sensors. This would be equivalent to being able to render the dark side of the moon by only using images from earthbound telescopes. It is not mathematically possible and this is what makes me feel uneasy about the gunner view.

Its not only possible in principle to construct a 3d representation and show an object from a 3rd person view relative to where the cameras are, it's quite simple for a computer to do with enough data, and can be done in real time. A fantastic example of this is this video posted a few pages back:
[video=youtube;mCojywS4hUg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCojywS4hUg[/video]

This is basically a 2017 version of an identical system as the one shown in the gunner cam, from the perspective to being able to 'orbit' around the device that houses the cameras in real time.

 

[SystemShift]

We have photos (from probes) of the dark side of the moon. We also know the shape of the moon. We can measure the current lighting on the near-side of the moon. We know what's happening on the dark side of the moon (nothing). We know the composition of the moon, hence the reflectivity etc. Hence, we could create an accurate representation of the dark side of the moon.

In Elite to "know what's happening", we look at the radar and HUD. The HUD knows the orientation of a ship, the radar knows the position, whether it's firing, whether the shields are up or down etc.

There's no reason that the ship's computer couldn't generate an accurate full-colour view from a virtual camera. It would probably have quirks, maybe asteroids would sometimes shift in shape, and damage would shift on a hull... but with a powerful enough computer this seems viable.

Partially agree, if some thing flys up and hides behind the moon, there is no way you would no it was there unless you launched another probe and had another look.

 

[dumbo]

Partially agree, if some thing flys up and hides behind the moon, there is no way you would no it was there unless you launched another probe and had another look.

Yep, quite true.

However, in ED, our radar-thingy would see the ship on the other side of the moon (asteroid). Our radar thingy is quite clever.

 

[Max Stingray]

Its not only possible in principle to construct a 3d representation and show an object from a 3rd person view relative to where the cameras are, it's quite simple for a computer to do with enough data, and can be done in real time. A fantastic example of this is this video posted a few pages back:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCojywS4hUg

This is basically a 2017 version of an identical system as the one shown in the gunner cam, from the perspective to being able to 'orbit' around the device that houses the cameras in real time.

Yes, it is possible in principle and in practise to project an image acquire from one point of view on another, what is not possible is to show what is not visible from the original camera unless you invoke some magic handwaveium.

 

[Xargo]

However, in ED, our radar-thingy would see the ship on the other side of the moon (asteroid). Our radar thingy is quite clever.

The clever radar thingy needs thermal signature to detect the ship though. So if the 3rd person gunner view depends on the radar sensor data, it shouldn't be able to spot any targets where there are no temperature differences. So yeah, it could spot a ship on the other side of the asteroid but not the other side of the asteroid and not even the ship if it was running silent.

Also in general a lot of people are saying that it's possible to make a photogrammetric reconstruction of the scene even now in 2017 and use that as an argument that it should be easily possible over thousand years later in ED. Well yeah, it should but if photogrammetry is used, you need to triangulate your observations like this:

https://wiki.hexagongeospatial.com/index.php?title=Photogrammetric_Solutions

For the solution to be robust the so called base to height ratio must be high enough or the accuracy of the measurement degrades. What this means is that the sensors (cameras) used to capture the observations need to be wide enough apart in relation to the distance to the observed target. So basically with a ship like Corvette this could be entirely possible because the ship is very long and thus would have a long baseline. On the other hand the accuracy should degrade for targets that are forward or rear because the ship is much narrower compared to the length of the ship. Similarly with smaller ships this should result in much lower quality 3rd person view quality. Also as stated by other posters, this wouldn't solve the occlusion problems so if the 3rd person view was generated from camera data from near the ship, the offset camera position should show a lot of blind spots.

Personally though none of that matters... ED takes place over a thousand years into the future and surely there will be some technology to observe the surroundings in much better detail than what we can do now so that's not why I'm against that gunner view. What bother me however is that the gunner view seems so disconnected from other ED gameplay. It also makes silent running pretty obsolete if SR ships are shown in the gunner view. It simply doesn't look nearly as fun to me than the holographic representations we were shown in concept artwork or the other combat aspect already in the game.

As stated numerous times in this thread, there are a lot of explanations why 3rd person view is totally possible with the technology that should be available in ED, just like autopilot, aimbot and such would be. Still we don't have autopilot, why? Because this is a game and if everything was automated there would be nothing left to play. This gunner view is taking the game in that direction and seems disconnected from otherwise immersive and excellent basic mechanics we have in the game.

Finally an answer to the "don't use it then" crowd. I haven't heard of an option to block everyone who uses gunner view from affecting BGS. Though they already said REP will not be given from multicrew sessions, maybe they could also make the sessions to not affect influence either. If that's going to be implemented then I can continue playing the game without using the 3rd person cam. However I don't see FD firing up their own galaxy for people who want to use 3rd person cam so I can't simply choose not to use it but we'll see...

 

[Max Stingray]

We have photos (from probes) of the dark side of the moon. We also know the shape of the moon. We can measure the current lighting on the near-side of the moon. We know what's happening on the dark side of the moon (nothing). We know the composition of the moon, hence the reflectivity etc. Hence, we could create an accurate representation of the dark side of the moon.

In Elite to "know what's happening", we look at the radar and HUD. The HUD knows the orientation of a ship, the radar knows the position, whether it's firing, whether the shields are up or down etc.

There's no reason that the ship's computer couldn't generate an accurate full-colour view from a virtual camera. It would probably have quirks, maybe asteroids would sometimes shift in shape, and damage would shift on a hull... but with a powerful enough computer this seems viable.

If you read carefully what I wrote the basic assumption was to use only earthbound imagery. If you send a probe to the other side you obviously can. We could also pretend that in ED u can see through objects in the visible spectrum with some neutrino-tachyon-photonmagic-trekky-tech. My point was that it is unnecessary to invoke any handwaveium if you place the photosphere center within the ship. Imho it would have caused less controversy. In any case it is done ... I am reasonably sure they have considered the alternative, it would just be nice to know a bit more about the rationale.

 

[CMDR Ofan]

The clever radar thingy needs thermal signature to detect the ship though. So if the 3rd person gunner view depends on the radar sensor data, it shouldn't be able to spot any targets where there are no temperature differences. So yeah, it could spot a ship on the other side of the asteroid but not the other side of the asteroid and not even the ship if it was running silent.

Also in general a lot of people are saying that it's possible to make a photogrammetric reconstruction of the scene even now in 2017 and use that as an argument that it should be easily possible over thousand years later in ED. Well yeah, it should but if photogrammetry is used, you need to triangulate your observations like this:

https://wiki.hexagongeospatial.com/index.php?title=Photogrammetric_Solutions

For the solution to be robust the so called base to height ratio must be high enough or the accuracy of the measurement degrades. What this means is that the sensors (cameras) used to capture the observations need to be wide enough apart in relation to the distance to the observed target. So basically with a ship like Corvette this could be entirely possible because the ship is very long and thus would have a long baseline. On the other hand the accuracy should degrade for targets that are forward or rear because the ship is much narrower compared to the length of the ship. Similarly with smaller ships this should result in much lower quality 3rd person view quality. Also as stated by other posters, this wouldn't solve the occlusion problems so if the 3rd person view was generated from camera data from near the ship, the offset camera position should show a lot of blind spots.

Personally though none of that matters... ED takes place over a thousand years into the future and surely there will be some technology to observe the surroundings in much better detail than what we can do now so that's not why I'm against that gunner view. What bother me however is that the gunner view seems so disconnected from other ED gameplay. It also makes silent running pretty obsolete if SR ships are shown in the gunner view. It simply doesn't look nearly as fun to me than the holographic representations we were shown in concept artwork or the other combat aspect already in the game.

As stated numerous times in this thread, there are a lot of explanations why 3rd person view is totally possible with the technology that should be available in ED, just like autopilot, aimbot and such would be. Still we don't have autopilot, why? Because this is a game and if everything was automated there would be nothing left to play. This gunner view is taking the game in that direction and seems disconnected from otherwise immersive and excellent basic mechanics we have in the game.

Finally an answer to the "don't use it then" crowd. I haven't heard of an option to block everyone who uses gunner view from affecting BGS. Though they already said REP will not be given from multicrew sessions, maybe they could also make the sessions to not affect influence either. If that's going to be implemented then I can continue playing the game without using the 3rd person cam. However I don't see FD firing up their own galaxy for people who want to use 3rd person cam so I can't simply choose not to use it but we'll see...

Not true, it does a great job of detecting cold rocks spinning in space in asteroid fields obscured or not and mapping them in some exacting detail.The rest of your ship systems do a good job of detecting cold things at a distance in space (tiny moons, planetary rings etc) whether LOS is obscured or not, future tech remember.

 

[Xargo]

Not true, it does a great job of detecting cold rocks spinning in space in asteroid fields obscured or not and mapping them in some exacting detail.The rest of your ship systems do a good job of detecting cold things at a distance in space (tiny moons, planetary rings etc) whether LOS is obscured or not, future tech remember.

That kinda support my point here: "Personally though none of that matters... ED takes place over a thousand years into the future and surely there will be some technology to observe the surroundings in much better detail than what we can do now so that's not why I'm against that gunner view."

How do you explain why sensors can pick up cool bodies but not when it's a ship commanded by another player? The answer is pretty obvious and stated repeatedly in this very thread: "It's a game."

The thing where the argument is whether people find the implementation shown in the livestream fun or not. My opinion is that consistency == fun, I don't see this 3rd person cam as consistent with the rest of the game and thus "not fun". Trying to prove the point whether 3rd person view can or cannot be done with some high tech stuff is besides the point. What is important if this is something people want or not. I don't want it, some people do and FD should go with the opinion that gives them the most assets in the long run. Now it seems to me that they are looking for an option that gives them most assets in the short run and that's what worries me. As I said in my first post, I was really looking forward to multicrew and I have to say I'm dissappointed with what I see. I can only hope majority of the people are happy with the update and not only in the short run. That's all I really care about.

 

[CMDR Ofan]

That kinda support my point here: "Personally though none of that matters... ED takes place over a thousand years into the future and surely there will be some technology to observe the surroundings in much better detail than what we can do now so that's not why I'm against that gunner view."

How do you explain why sensors can pick up cool bodies but not when it's a ship commanded by another player? The answer is pretty obvious and stated repeatedly in this very thread: "It's a game."

The thing where the argument is whether people find the implementation shown in the livestream fun or not. My opinion is that consistency == fun, I don't see this 3rd person cam as consistent with the rest of the game and thus "not fun". Trying to prove the point whether 3rd person view can or cannot be done with some high tech stuff is besides the point. What is important if this is something people want or not. I don't want it, some people do and FD should go with the opinion that gives them the most assets in the long run. Now it seems to me that they are looking for an option that gives them most assets in the short run and that's what worries me. As I said in my first post, I was really looking forward to multicrew and I have to say I'm dissappointed with what I see. I can only hope majority of the people are happy with the update and not only in the short run. That's all I really care about.

I don't try to explain it, if I did try I would go along the lines of advanced radiation dampening materials woven into the hulls making them contained systems meaning that only visual eyeballing of a target and thermal venting causing detection are valid for targeting ships. As ships don't have any old school 20th century imaging systems on board (because future) they rely on thermal radiation. Loads of pseudo science ways to explain it, like the sensors working off gravitational disturbances but the fsd drive in ships borking that so you have to thermally capture them, etc.

Ulitmately we don't need to explain it because we are looking at tech sufficiently advanced enough to appear as magic (to paraphrase).

You are trying to use modern day visions of consistency to judge things on one hand, but on the other saying consistency does not matter because it's future tech so anything goes; that argument itself is not consistant.

Edit: It's cool to say you hate it becasue it offends your personal sensibility but to lay that at the door of inconsistency is inconsistent

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

As far as we know, it's the same reason that the spaceships all still have honest-to-god cockpits with glass canopies: the Pilot's Federation says so. Same reason you aren't allowed to fly a spaceship via telepresence but rather the Helmsman/Pilot has to be physically on the ship. It's a Pilot's Federation regulation and anything they say goes because they are above and beyond the most powerful organization in the galaxy.

The technology definitely exists for a third person pilotable ship in Elite, but for whatever reason the Pilot's Federation does not allow that. There are any number of reasons why that might be the case, perhaps they don't trust that a 3rd person view couldn't be compromised, or perhaps there are concerns that virtual reality is too immersive and the pilot's reaction times might be slower. Maybe the concern is just that third person view for piloting the ship itself isn't that useful. Or it could just be tradition, Pilot's Federation CMDRs have been flying their ships manually from the cockpit since the first days and since they essentially started out as a space pilot union, they don't want to budge on this because it would make it easier for non-CMDRs to fly better.

But for whatever reason the PF doesn't allow flight via telepresence, and it doesn't allow third person operation of the spaceship (except using the vanity camera, but that's not really suitable for real flight because you don't have your instruments).

Why would the Pilots Federation not allow it. It makes zero sense. There is absolutly no logic to it. Also what have the Pilots Federation got to do with it. Surely that's all to do with the ship manufacturers. Or do the Pilots Federation own all the ship manufacturers.

I knew people are desperately trying to make sense of it, but in reality it doesn't and nothing ever real. The lore is completely trampled all over so nothing has any cohesiveness. It's all over the place. I really hope that the beta proves me wrong. I am desperate to be wrong.

 

[Nuarb]

Yes, it is possible in principle and in practice to project an image acquire from one point of view on another, what is not possible is to show what is not visible from the original camera unless you invoke some magic handwaveium.

In no part of what was shown of the gunnery cam did they look behind an object in the sense of the dark side of the moon. They didn't even look behind asteroids or anything. About the only thing you can say they saw "behind" would be a ship passing behind another ship from your ships point of view, if you understand what I mean. Thing is, even in this case, we know your computer systems from the cockpit can track a ship going behind another ship, not just in position but complete orientation. Once you have that data you can simulate whatever view you want.

Frankly, the gunner view doesn't look like it zooms out, so even for the most extreme example, you would have to have the ship parked on top of an asteroid to try and look behind it where they wouldn't physically be able to get data from. However we haven't seen an example of that, maybe it just zooms in in those situations so its still blocked by the asteroid. Besides all that, if your objection is 'in an incredibly forced and rare circumstance you might be able to see behind an asteroid", well... thats not a good enough reason to scrap a system that they've spent a ton of time working on.

 

[Xargo]

Ulitmately we don't need to explain it because we are looking at tech sufficiently advanced enough to appear as magic (to paraphrase).

You are trying to use modern day visions of consistency to judge things on one hand, but on the other saying consistency does not matter because it's future tech so anything goes; that argument itself is not consistant.

Edit: It's cool to say you hate it becasue it offends your personal sensibility but to lay that at the door of inconsistency is inconsistent

You know saying what I said doesn't negate the point I made in the first place. I'll quote it again to you: "Personally though none of that matters... ED takes place over a thousand years into the future and surely there will be some technology to observe the surroundings in much better detail than what we can do now so that's not why I'm against that gunner view."

There you have it for a third time. You see I'm not trying to use modern day visions of consistency to judge things but quite the opposite really. The point is that the whole gunner view just seems to me like it's detached from the rest of the game. I literally thought when watching the livestream "Cool, now they are showing how the gunner operation looks like when viewed from the new vanity cam." and was shocked when I realized that is the actual gunner view. There's my subjective personal opinion right there and I'm not alone. As said, to me it seems inconsistent and detached from the rest of the game. I don't care how it's possible to explain how it works or doesn't work. The whole thing could be easily fixed by placing the viewpoint of the gunner view to the center of the ship and have the ship appear transparent. Though I would prefer if the whole gunner role was replaced with a weapons officer role who would take care of targeting and optimizing weapons systems to cope with various defensive variations that would become possible via other multicrew roles. That would be actual new content instead of wrapping the same old content to a new kind of UI. Also silent running ships shouldn't be visible in gunner view and turrets should be affected by the chaff or have the area of the crosshair made as small as it's in the case of fixed weapons. Boom, done.

 

[SystemShift]

My main reson for not liking the gunnery cam is it dose not seam to fit in with the rest of the game, it seam out of place.

 

[Max Stingray]

The face towards the gunner point of view of any object between the ship and the gunner p.o.v. is the dark side of the moon.

- - - Updated - - -

In no part of what was shown of the gunnery cam did they look behind an object in the sense of the dark side of the moon. They didn't even look behind asteroids or anything. About the only thing you can say they saw "behind" would be a ship passing behind another ship from your ships point of view, if you understand what I mean. Thing is, even in this case, we know your computer systems from the cockpit can track a ship going behind another ship, not just in position but complete orientation. Once you have that data you can simulate whatever view you want.

Frankly, the gunner view doesn't look like it zooms out, so even for the most extreme example, you would have to have the ship parked on top of an asteroid to try and look behind it where they wouldn't physically be able to get data from. However we haven't seen an example of that, maybe it just zooms in in those situations so its still blocked by the asteroid. Besides all that, if your objection is 'in an incredibly forced and rare circumstance you might be able to see behind an asteroid", well... thats not a good enough reason to scrap a system that they've spent a ton of time working on.

The face towards the gunner point of view of any object between the the ship and the gunner P.o.v is the dark side of the moon.

 

[w3bbo]

Seems to me like a lot of nonsense trying to appeal to the console pew-pew market.

Can we have a new instance for the grown ups/old farts please.

 

[lysan]

Seems to me like a lot of nonsense trying to appeal to the console pew-pew market.

Can we have a new instance for the grown ups/old farts please.

So you want to be a gunner???

[video=youtube;2bwIUebQT1Y]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bwIUebQT1Y[/video]