Project Orbiter Battle Simulation Project Needs Developers!

[T.Neo]

In general I'd agree with you, because converting meshes would save a lot of time and would ensure we actually had *any* meshes, other then missiles and bombs...

Yeah... I don't think I will show the results of my first attempt to mesh a tank.

We're putting infantry in cos it's not costing us much work at this stage.

Apart from ridiculously difficult meshes of humans, unless we just want to have UMMUs sliding around shooting eachother.

 

[Wishbone]

Would you care to post any screenshots? And no, videos don't count since I cannot access them.

 

[RisingFury]

Would you care to post any screenshots? And no, videos don't count since I cannot access them.

Screenshots are in the first post.

 

[Wishbone]

Guess my reading skills need a bit of honing... Thanks, I can see the light at the end of the wind tunnel now. Re: infantry combat - considering machine guns (or metal storm) will be frequently used, do you plan to track each bullet or resolve hits statistically? Orbiter doesn't like very large scenarios yet.

 

[RisingFury]

we are going to simulate bullets as vessels.

What in hell are you talking about?! There's no way we can afford that!

Before the ground collision was rewritten and activated I started flying around with a combat DG, dropping bombs everywhere. Even with labels turned off and me zooming so far out you couldn't even see the Sun anymore, the framerate was still around 20 FPS. That was with 500 bombs laying on the ground.

I'm running an AMD 3000+ CPU and given that it's one of the weaker computers around here by now, might as well use it as a testbed...

Maybe we'll fire a few shells out every second to let people know where the bullets are heading...

 

[T.Neo]

What in hell are you talking about?! There's no way we can afford that!

Well, that's what I heard, sorry if my statement was inaccurate due to further testing. :facepalm:

 

[Hielor]

What in hell are you talking about?! There's no way we can afford that!

Before the ground collision was rewritten and activated I started flying around with a combat DG, dropping bombs everywhere. Even with labels turned off and me zooming so far out you couldn't even see the Sun anymore, the framerate was still around 20 FPS. That was with 500 bombs laying on the ground.

I'm running an AMD 3000+ CPU and given that it's one of the weaker computers around here by now, might as well use it as a testbed...

Maybe we'll fire a few shells out every second to let people know where the bullets are heading...

Ah, but there's no reason to have 500 bombs laying on the ground--once the bomb gets to the ground, you can have it delete itself (after applying whatever effect it would've had).

And yes, an AMD 3000+ is on the low end at this point in time, but better to make it work well on low-end hardware than have it work well on high-end hardware and be unusable on low-end hardware.

So since you won't be simulating individual bullets, you're going to be using some kind of statistical determination of whether a hit is scored? That question has been asked a couple times in the thread, but I haven't seen an answer (sorry if I missed it, the thread sometimes goes through a dozen or more posts between when I get to reading it)

 

[RisingFury]

Ah, but there's no reason to have 500 bombs laying on the ground--once the bomb gets to the ground, you can have it delete itself (after applying whatever effect it would've had).

And yes, an AMD 3000+ is on the low end at this point in time, but better to make it work well on low-end hardware than have it work well on high-end hardware and be unusable on low-end hardware.

So since you won't be simulating individual bullets, you're going to be using some kind of statistical determination of whether a hit is scored? That question has been asked a couple times in the thread, but I haven't seen an answer (sorry if I missed it, the thread sometimes goes through a dozen or more posts between when I get to reading it)

Sorry for the late reply, didn't notice your post...

Well, of course missiles and bombs will get deleted once they're done blowing things up. I was just pointing out that we can't afford such high numbers of vessels in game and if you're talking about a multi-barrel gun that fires many hundred rounds per minute, it could get really bad quickly...

We can't just go with statistics based and we can't use Orbiter's vessel class, because it's too big for our requirement... So at this point I see three choices...

- Create a 'lite' class that gets fired like a bullet, but isn't derived from VESSEL. Propagate that. That might be the most accurate, but most resource hungry method.

- Make a system were any fast firing gun - automatic weapons, Gatling guns,... would be handled like a laser, but affected by gravity. Basically check the flight path instantly for vessels, while keeping the ability to fire VESSEL derived shells, for tanks and artillery...

- Make a system that is a bit more advanced then the last described - split the path into segments and predict if any vessel will be in the flight path when the bullet hits it. This one might be a bit more resource unfriendly, but I imagine better then the first one. It wouldn't be as accurate, but better then the second option. We've yet to discuss and debate our options though.

In either case, I'd limit the range of bullets (not shells) to a few kilometer range and have them delete themselves when crossing it...

Any suggestions (from qualified) people are welcome

 

[RisingFury]

sorta like a CCIP mode in aircraft fire control systems, you'll also need to account for velocities and in an atmosphere perhaps wind, certainly dynamic pressures, no?

but still you'll not want to work out the impact point for every single round... or you don't need to... I'd have figured on simply rendering tracer, say 1 in 10 rounds? so if you're firing 500rpm then you're only calculating a maximum a 50 impacts per minute (and only drawing 1/10th of total rounds), but account for 10 impacts or a damage multiplier for each impact. perhaps give targets a wider hit-box to account for shotgun effects with a reduced number of calculated projectiles.

I thought of another potential optimization here: ignore the possibility for collateral damage and have bullets only be capable of hitting whatever their original target was. If they pass their target without scoring a hit, they can be safely deleted (since you know they're never going to hit it).

This also saves a whole lot of math with collision detections against ships other than the primary target, at the cost of some realism--but if you're looking for performance gains, it's probably realism that you can afford to sacrifice.

Thanks! Good ideas!

 

[Wishbone]

Has anybody mentioned infantry combat here (hint - it wasn't me :tiphat? With machine guns and he-frag arty fires? I was kinda responding to the explicitly expressed desire to have bullet-level, hi-fidelity modelling. If there's only _space_ combat, how would you model attacks on bases?

 

[Coolhand]

yeah it would be a pain in the ass if you were strafing a column of tanks and had to switch targets constantly... and how about firing with no lock at all?

perhaps if you're talking a ground war, or maybe so that system is flexible enough to support even starwars like scenarios the problem is not so much to do with stray shells with a finite lifespan (which could perhaps be tunable by the player depending on how fast their machine is) as the sheer amount of other stuff that could be going on.

Falcon 4 / Freefalcon, if anyones played that (if not get it, its freeware and its a great sim) uses a 'bubble' system, so groups of units are treated as 1 entity with attrition of individual units calculated statistically. until the player comes within a certain range only then will the machine have to think about individual units. so they can have a large war persisting over the entire country (and its a dynamic, not scripted campaign) even on the 1998 hardware it was originally designed for.

 

[Hielor]

Has anybody mentioned infantry combat here (hint - it wasn't me :tiphat? With machine guns and he-frag arty fires? I was kinda responding to the explicitly expressed desire to have bullet-level, hi-fidelity modelling. If there's only _space_ combat, how would you model attacks on bases?

I'm pretty sure that standard battle tactics for infantry haven't involved "massed formations" since, oh I don't know, World War II?

I'm also still unsure why we need infantry combat in a space simulator. "How would you model attacks on bases?" Simple enough--simulate the infantry combat to a level good enough for a flight sim. Plenty of flight sims have simulated tank and infantry combat (for AI) without completely recreating them.

 

[Wishbone]

Orbiter doesn't know what fog of war is... sad but true... everybody's sitawareness is always perfect. Re: both ways - the side with the more numerous fleet wins, Lanchester equations work in space as well as they do on Earth.

 

[Hielor]

Re: both ways - the side with the more numerous fleet wins, Lanchester equations work in space as well as they do on Earth.

Except that "the side with the more numerous fleet wins" doesn't seem to hold true very often on Earth...

 

[Polaris]

Is OBSP ready for further testing- or is it finished?

 

[RisingFury]

Is OBSP ready for further testing- or is it finished?

It's not finished. Not by a long shot. But we've made good progress in the past weeks and we'll release a new version soon. Don't ask when, not even I know

 

[garyw]

Mod Note: This thread has now been split in two.
The Space weapons discussion has been moved here.

 

[Eli13]

now will this have any larger than xr-5 sized ships for (kind-of) capital ship combat?

 

[escapetomsfate]

OBSP needs developers!

In the last year, Orbiter Battle Simulation Project (OBSP) has seen a number of changes. First of all, the project underwent a complete code rewrite, the result of which is now modular ("component" based) and much more stable than previous versions. From these stable foundations, we have continued work on an addon for Orbiter that will encompass not only everything required for combat in Orbiter, but a generic (and vastly improved) autopilot/AI system, an expandable damage model and an entire vessel superstructure for developers.

RisingFury has been hard at work creating combat autopilots. These autopilots are able to destroy a specified target using several different weapons - Air-to-air missiles, air-to-ground missiles and freefall bombs have all been implemented and are available to OBSP's autopilots. Eventually these autopilots will be controlled by an AI system (which is currently in the works) - but for now, OBSP's lua interface is used, which integrates seamlessly into Orbiter's own scripting system.

Although progress on OBSP is swift, we are need of help. We are in need of C++ developers to create an open source and generic aircraft platform for OBSP. This will require a "magic" DLL which would read parameters from a
CFG file, so future OBSP developers can create planes with little or no knowledge of C++ - only the knowledge of aerodynamics and mechanics would be required. We already have this kind of system for weapons... developers only need to create a config file and a mesh for their missile/bomb, and OBSP's DLLs do the rest. We believe having a separate developer creating the DLLs for the aircraft would allow for a more feature packed platform, and an
earlier release!

Some videos of the new OBSP:

RisingFury's new combat autopilots:

RisingFury explaining the need for and role of future developers:
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-zNHP0sbiE"]‪OBSP - Call to arms‬‏ - YouTube[/ame]

Many thanks to RisingFury, TNeo and Loru.

 

[Eagle1Division]

I'm not a programmer, but I can make models, and IIRC Orbiter models can be made with Gmax...

Hmm. I think you should question whether or not tanks and such would be necessary. Honestly, I find it a bit odd focus so far has been on aerial combat. There are plenty of flight sims, tank games, etc. out there, but what would be extremely unique is a space combat sim that's realistic, like orbiter.

At least IMO, that would make the most sense, I mean, after all, Orbiter is a space sim, not really a flight sim... IMO the concern should be ASAT's, not SAM's.

And IMO explosion effects should always have at least two particles: The fire, since it must have additive rendering, and the smoke, which would use alpha. But Additive is VERY important to get the fire to look good...

That sounded kinda cynical. I do like the idea and what's being done, though, those are just some comments. It is exciting.

Since there's air to air missiles, have you considered incorporating some of the aircraft addons? It would be really interesting to see a Delta-Glider go up against a Mig-31, or an F-15 launch an ASAT at a DG that's in orbit.

But the funnest thing, IMO, would be orbiting above a battle site where F-22's are engaging Su-27's and advanced Chinese jets, and popping jets like balloons with an IR laser from orbit. The challenge would be to get the most kills and turn the tide of the battle with what little time you have before you pass the target, while shooting down ASAT salvos before they hit you. Then you'd have to do a burn to change your LAN or INC to pass over the battle site again, and do it again, if there's any targets left.


I'll Echo Eli here, will there be any capital ships? Will the team take advice from the Space Combat Techniques Discussion, and implement realistic space-to-space combat? That's the biggie I'm excited about . I guess the hard part would be getting missiles to work by orbital dynamics. I've done a good amount of work on that, if I can find the old notes...