Air to Air, Air to Ground RADAR idea

Mauser101 · 2012-02-19, 06:59 AM

I'm one of the big proponents of TrackIR (or something similar) implementation in PS2 and I also like to make the friendly skies less so. So I was sitting here thinking about why I want head tracking so badly and it really comes down to situational awareness. Specifically in dog fights.

Any Battlefield player (especially those who like hardcore like me) will recall how frustrating it is to keep an eye on your target in that series of games. It was similarly difficult in PS1 if you disliked "turreting" your aircraft. It came down to not having any clue were your target went when he left your narrow field of view. If you were lucky he'd show on your minimap but that was only so useful as it was not three dimensional.

Real military aircraft have radars and multifunction displays that feed information to the pilot about what the targets are doing. In a plethora of flight and space sims you also have targeting radar. It usually comes down to a few simple commands.

Q- Target under crosshair
T- Cycle fwd thu target list
Y- Cycle back thru target list

And it often got more in depth with changing radar modes (air to air, air to ground, navigation, terrain mapping) and all kinds of other whizbang doodad things that flight sims do to make things uber realistic. That's NOT what I am proposing.

I am imagining a very simple radar display on your HUD. You can ONLY target a vehicle that is under your cursor (otherwise, with a cycling target system you could just spam the T key while flying around). It could take several seconds for the target lock to be gained or it could be gained as soon as you press Q. The overriding purpose of this radar is to A. put a red box around your target and B. when he flies off screen to have an arrow point which direction he has gone.

Balance- The basic balancing system I forsee is simply range. Due to the magnometri-whosiwhatsis techno jargon metal alloys that make up the planet radar is only able to lock on to and maintain a lock over a fairly short distance. I'm seeing some arbitrary distance considerably less than the lock a SparrowMax could maintain in PS1, until upgraded. Certainly it could not be maintained past maximum draw distance. Terrain clutter might also be able to break a lock. I dunno, that all comes down to testing.

Whether it would be air to air only or include air to ground capability I'm undecided upon. I don't necessarily think air to ground would be needed. Kneejerk reaction says Air to Infantry is a big no no.

I envision this whole radar system to be a sidegrade skill tree unto itself. It bridges out from air to air missiles into a basic hud that displays the directional arrow, target box and very basic target information (think Adv. Targeting implant from PS1, to include enemy vehicle type, player name, hit points & distance) in the upper left hand corner. Additional training in this skill tree could unlock greater target info in the hud (locational damage of target, velocity etc), increased radar range, decreased lock time, causing enemy air vehicles to show up on the minimap out to radar range (think audio amp but longer), mayhaps radar jamming (if so make it use up afterburner juice to activate it).

Indeed I could see this as a system that could be a second upgrade to flak on a Lightning or other vehicles that have a flak option. I see it as much less useful but if you're really set on being an anti-air vehicle player why not slap a radar on your lighting?

As far as difficulty to implement I really doubt it'd be that bad. Most everything I'm envisioning was already in PS1. Advanced targeting gave enemy health and distance (nobody paid attention to it but you got distance and ping time if you held your cursor over sombody). Audio amp gave minimap detection. The damage indicator told you were the target was in relation to you.

The radar in its most basic design is a target information box on the hud and a directional arrow telling you were the rat bastard got to when he flew off your screen.

What say you?

Hamma · 2012-02-19, 05:41 PM

Some really neat thoughts here

ALthough I don't think they will go that deep into the Air Combat

Livefire · 2012-02-19, 05:44 PM

Originally Posted by Mauser101

I'm one of the big proponents of TrackIR (or something similar) implementation in PS2 and I also like to make the friendly skies less so. So I was sitting here thinking about why I want head tracking so badly and it really comes down to situational awareness. Specifically in dog fights.

Any Battlefield player (especially those who like hardcore like me) will recall how frustrating it is to keep an eye on your target in that series of games. It was similarly difficult in PS1 if you disliked "turreting" your aircraft. It came down to not having any clue were your target went when he left your narrow field of view. If you were lucky he'd show on your minimap but that was only so useful as it was not three dimensional.

Real military aircraft have radars and multifunction displays that feed information to the pilot about what the targets are doing. In a plethora of flight and space sims you also have targeting radar. It usually comes down to a few simple commands.

Q- Target under crosshair
T- Cycle fwd thu target list
Y- Cycle back thru target list

And it often got more in depth with changing radar modes (air to air, air to ground, navigation, terrain mapping) and all kinds of other whizbang doodad things that flight sims do to make things uber realistic. That's NOT what I am proposing.

I am imagining a very simple radar display on your HUD. You can ONLY target a vehicle that is under your cursor (otherwise, with a cycling target system you could just spam the T key while flying around). It could take several seconds for the target lock to be gained or it could be gained as soon as you press Q. The overriding purpose of this radar is to A. put a red box around your target and B. when he flies off screen to have an arrow point which direction he has gone.

Balance- The basic balancing system I forsee is simply range. Due to the magnometri-whosiwhatsis techno jargon metal alloys that make up the planet radar is only able to lock on to and maintain a lock over a fairly short distance. I'm seeing some arbitrary distance considerably less than the lock a SparrowMax could maintain in PS1, until upgraded. Certainly it could not be maintained past maximum draw distance. Terrain clutter might also be able to break a lock. I dunno, that all comes down to testing.

Whether it would be air to air only or include air to ground capability I'm undecided upon. I don't necessarily think air to ground would be needed. Kneejerk reaction says Air to Infantry is a big no no.

I envision this whole radar system to be a sidegrade skill tree unto itself. It bridges out from air to air missiles into a basic hud that displays the directional arrow, target box and very basic target information (think Adv. Targeting implant from PS1, to include enemy vehicle type, player name, hit points & distance) in the upper left hand corner. Additional training in this skill tree could unlock greater target info in the hud (locational damage of target, velocity etc), increased radar range, decreased lock time, causing enemy air vehicles to show up on the minimap out to radar range (think audio amp but longer), mayhaps radar jamming (if so make it use up afterburner juice to activate it).

Indeed I could see this as a system that could be a second upgrade to flak on a Lightning or other vehicles that have a flak option. I see it as much less useful but if you're really set on being an anti-air vehicle player why not slap a radar on your lighting?

As far as difficulty to implement I really doubt it'd be that bad. Most everything I'm envisioning was already in PS1. Advanced targeting gave enemy health and distance (nobody paid attention to it but you got distance and ping time if you held your cursor over sombody). Audio amp gave minimap detection. The damage indicator told you were the target was in relation to you.

The radar in its most basic design is a target information box on the hud and a directional arrow telling you were the rat bastard got to when he flew off your screen.

What say you?

I would like them to go all out with ingame systems such as radar. Make it as realistic as possible and scifi like so better then reality.

Whalenator · 2012-02-19, 07:55 PM

Or they could just implement freelook.
Air to air engagements aren't going to be that long-ranged.

Mauser101 · 2012-02-21, 02:41 AM

I can only agree with you on free-look Whalenator. I don't need the "Where the F'd he go," indicator if I can just track him visually. Here's to hoping we can. In the leaked PC Gamer article freelook was mentioned in regards to the ATV, which we already had in PS1, so the mechanic is atleast in there. We just didn't have it in the air. All we had was the 3rd person keybind.

Hell, I wouldn't mind having both, but I'd much rather have free look in aircraft.