Combat Simulators

[chuck_starchaser]

I'm reading The Price of Freedom, to help me with the storyline work.
When Blair gets called back into duty by Tolwyn, his first job is to go to the combat simulators to get a re-accreditation.

The original game had no simulators, but I regard that as an omission. And the fact is, the books are canon as much as the game, and the books mention combat simulators.

Having simulators IG shouldn't be rocket science. Just another room in a carrier or space station or other base where you can go and "design your mission" and play it, and instead of ESC-Q when you get killed you just pop off full-screen mode and you're looking at the simulator panel and a screen reading FAILED TRY AGAIN? YES NO.

[Fireskull]

All WC games besides privateer had sims It would be cool if we had them too yea.

[spiritplumber]

We can hack something together now, or wait until the OGRE framework is in place since it can spawn a sub-instance of itself, or something like that (Daniel did explain but I'm stoopid ^^; )

[chuck_starchaser]

YAY!

[klauss]

Basically, you can render the "view" to anywhere, which includes a "simulator screen" inside a "simulator cockpit" inside the base. But I think that's going overly detailed. Most people expect full immersiveness with the simulator. We don't want (IMO), a simulator inside a simulator to show as such (that would only shift focus to the game itself being a simulator and not real).

[chuck_starchaser]

That's all I was asking for. Basically, you sit at the simulator, but once you press start, it goes full-screen, same as if you were in space. Whole idea is to be able to practise before going on a difficult mission. I don't mind spending time practising and getting killed in the simulator, but once I go in real space I hate to die. It kills the immersiveness for me. Just a psychological twist, I guess, but I think it would make a huge difference, immersiveness-wise.

[spiritplumber]

If I had to ask for a feature I'd ask for the simulator to have a lower graphic level or lower resolution.

[chuck_starchaser]

I'd hope in the 27th century most displays will have better resolution than the best eyes are able to see, as well as 32-bit floating point precision per color channel. Should be hard to tell between a display and the real thing.
Maybe the difference should be the way you sink into the seat when you accelerate in the real thing versus the simulator.

[klauss]

I see...
Let me think about it.
One way I think it could be done, is to be able to change config variables from python. Thing is, that's not hard, but the change won't matter (spirit: you know, static float blah=...).
So... I'll think about alternatives... hm...