Gun Position In 1st Person (AND) Optics [Archive]

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Jan 21 2007, 22:17

*EDIT* - NEW VIDEO - Iron Sight Issues (http://files.filefront.com//;6596918;;/)

"This is a video that explains the iron sight issues and the difference between having a low FOV (default) and high FOV (modified) in iron sight/optic mode and also the possibility of having freeaim. I made this kind of quick even though it took a few hours, but I hope this makes things clearer."

I also added a new picture below with comments in green and red.
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I have a few very important suggestions/ideas that would give players more control and awareness. Starting with......

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Gun Position In First Person View
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a) position of your weapon in first person view. This applies to both cadet and veteran players, but changing it would be more useful for players that do not use crosshairs. The current gun position does not give you a sense that you’re actually holding the gun up to your shoulder. When you look at a soldier in game, they’re gun is pretty close up to they’re eye, but when you look at your gun placement in first person view, it almost looks like your firing from the hip. Instead of the sight line close to your eye and the butt of the gun in your shoulder (I know if you freelook, the butt of the gun is in your shoulder, but when looking straight it doesn’t give that impression). It looks like the gun is held like a firing from the hip position.

I made an animation to illustrate this point.....(Notice that if your gun is higher up and closer into your body, your sense of aim (without using crosshairs) increases. This included with the free aim that is already in the game, gives players much more awareness of where your gun is actually pointed to with more precision and control then before)...........

http://img144.imageshack.us/img144/970/gunmodeanimationsmall7fv.gif

Sorry for my poor Photoshop skills, as this animation is clearly not accurate, but this should give you a clearer understanding of what I mean. Of course the perspective and other things are slightly off (the butt of the gun should be slightly more inward towards the center and the gun shouldn’t be as high and slanted, ect...), but you should be able to see what I’m getting at.

.......and here is the default ArmA gun position with comments....
http://img219.imageshack.us/img219/9848/armaeyeline6yv.jpg

Here are two pictures taken from the RvS clips Dslyecxi posted here ( http://dslyecxi.com/bestoftactical.html ).

1) http://img245.imageshack.us/img245/130/rvs14qa.jpg 2) http://img263.imageshack.us/img263/6779/rvs28vp.jpg

The gun placement isn’t “perfect”, but it’s "pretty good".

Here is a picture I made a while back........
http://img226.imageshack.us/img226/7653/ironsightview3abb1.jpg
IMO, I still think even these gun positions need to be slightly higher and have less of an angle looking down the barrel by moving the butt of the gun slightly more inward toward the body.

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Iron Sight / Optics View
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There is also one other thing that I want to change/experiment with (if BIS does not make the change) and that is the.....

b) iron sight/optics view. Right now it’s either have your gun in the “fire from the hip” position with no zoom (high FOV) or looking down the sights with way too much Zoom (low FOV). My thought on this is to have the default FOV/Zoom when you go into iron sight mode (meaning there is no Zoom), but when you zoom into your sight, it only Zooms in slightly (maybe as much or slightly less then the default iron sight view without Zooming is). I tested this and found out that your “head camera” moves down to the butt of the gun, so when you increase your FOV to the default “head camera” setting (which is no Zoom), you get a “fish eyed” gun view...... http://img244.imageshack.us/img244/7938/arma20070105062901231yw.jpg

Below is the default iron sight/optic view.........

http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/286/arma20070115221947065su.jpg

Now, to solve this (I’m guessing), you could move the position of your “head camera” forward along the Z-axis , while not changing the FOV of the entire picture, until it is at the correct position. A small FOV adjustment may be necessary, but hopefully not.

http://img219.imageshack.us/img219/5618/zaxisironsight0dn.jpg

Notice how aware you are of your surroundings when there is no zoom applied to the iron sight/optic view (look at the environment to the left and right of the two pictures above).

I should also point out that with no zoom on phase 2 (see below for explanation), you can walk in iron sight/optic view without feeling like you are going to throw up.

To make things easier, let’s call the gun lower position phase 1, iron sight/optics view phase 2, and zoomed in iron sight/optics view phase 3. Notice that without the FOV change in phase 2, you are still aware of your surroundings......

http://img62.imageshack.us/img62/1899/gunmodeanimation3small2ax.gif

.....whereas with the default phase 2 with the Zoom/low FOV, your view is restricted.

http://img240.imageshack.us/img240/2023/gunmodeanimation3defsma1kp.gif

Here is a small pistol comparison animation.......(The left side is the modified one with no Zoom in phase 2 and the one on the right is the default phase 2 zoom of the original game when you zoom in fully).......

http://img262.imageshack.us/img262/9225/pistolmodified29cq.gif

What would also be a huge improvement is if in phase 2 you can still use freeaim like Infiltration. Look at the infiltration video that Dslyecxi posted on his site - http://video.google.com/videopl....hl=en), (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6106775160092980013&hl=en),)
Maybe in phase 3 when you zoom in, your gun can lock in place for the slightly zoomed in precision shot. I realize that freeaim in iron sight mode may not work like this, because there really is no “phase 3”. All “phase 3” is, is zoom added to phase 2, so there are really only 2 modes (gun at hip and iron sight/optic mode), but hopefully there is someway to incorporate this locking feature when you zoom in.

After thinking about ways to improve combat in ArmA, it’s amazing how many things are exactly as I imagined them for ArmA that are already in Infiltration. They really got their first person/no crosshair gameplay as good as possible. They give you enough visual feedback to have as much control and be pretty precise without the use of crosshairs. Also look at their grenade system ( http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=705675169925203364&hl=en ) and M-203 ladder sights ( http://dslyecxi.com/images....hts.jpg (http://dslyecxi.com/images/bestoftactical/infiltration/inf_203_sights.jpg) ).

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Temporary Raise Weapon / Lower Weapon
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Now, I don’t know if this is a bug or not, but if you use the “raise gun” button, it isn’t a true “temporary” function. If you hold it for a few seconds and move your body it locks whatever position you are in, meaning if you are in “at ease” mode and you hold the “raise weapon” button to bring your gun up to be in “aware” mode, if you moved around and you want to go to go back to “at ease” mode by letting go of the button you are holding, it doesn’t go back to “at ease” mode. It locks you into “aware” mode and vice versa, so it doesn’t act as a true temporary function like “walk or run temporary” does. I don’t know if this was on purpose, but I don’t see why it would be, since there are already 2 options “raise weapon”/”toggle raise weapon”, the first one should be a true temporary function, since you already have a toggle function for that action.

If this does indeed get changed or fixed, there is an experimental idea I have for this game that would use that function. Right now as it is, if you “raise/lower” your weapon you go into “ready”(aware)/”at ease”(careless) mode. I am hoping that there is some way to incorporate a “raise/lower” weapon feature while keeping you in the “ready”(aware) mode. This isn’t as easy as a task as the two ideas I posted above, but there would have to be a change in the animations to

a) have the gun pointed down towards the ground by default and you have to hold a button to bring up your gun so your in the “ready” position when you spot a tango (think of what you see in RvS or Swat, when the AI or another person point the gun to the ground and only raise it when necessary

OR

b) keep the gun up by default and when you hold the “temporary raise/lower weapon” button, your gun lowers to the ground to give you a less obstructive view.

Now if this working “temporary raise/lower weapon” button is implemented correctly, this could possibly also be used when in iron sight/optic view (phase 2) similar to this picture from Infiltration. It would give you a better view when you need it, but still keeping you in the iron sight mode ( http://dslyecxi.com/images....iew.jpg (http://dslyecxi.com/images/bestoftactical/infiltration/inf_lower_is_for_better_view.jpg) )

It could either be where you press or hold a button to bring up your weapon to the “ready” position or it could be reversed, so that you are always in the “ready” position and you press a button to lower your weapon, so that you can have a less obstructive view. The first option would be interesting, but the second seems more user friendly, since it would be used less.

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Fluid Movement Option
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I will just quickly mention this, because it’s not a “necessary” change and only BIS could implement it, but what would be very interesting is to see a “fluid movement” function in this game. Think of the movement speed system that was in Hidden&Dangerous and Splinter Cell. You would control your players speed by the mouse wheel up/down. Now some may hate this idea, but I’m asking for an option to control your speed this way. Frankly, I hate that evasive forward isn’t a toggle/temporary function like “walk/run temporary/toggle” is (you have to let go of W to stop, you can't slow down smoothly).

You may be thinking about a conflict with the action menu and mouse wheel, but I would think it would be possible to have a button to bring up the action menu to scroll through with your mouse wheel, but when you close out the action menu, your mouse wheel controls your speed once again.

For example, if you are walking at the slowest speed and hit the action menu button, you can still walk, but you cannot change your speed until you close out the action menu, because while you have the action menu open, the mouse wheel is used to scroll. This is just an interesting suggestion. Everything else I talked about I feel strongly about.

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Closing
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In closing, I would love for BIS to change some of this if not all, but realistically I don’t know if they would change something like this since the game is already out (although the huge 505 release is still 1 month away), but if any of you are reading this, please seriously consider these changes if you haven’t already done so.

Since the possibility for BIS to change some or all of these things is probably slim (I hope not though), I want to fix what I can myself or with help, or maybe even a mod team was thinking of fixing some of these. Everything should be doable, except for the temporary raise/lower weapon function and the fluid movement function, which would have to be changed/fixed by BIS. The rest might (and I hope), as a temporary fix, be as simple as lowering your “head camera” downward and slightly towards your gun for phase 1 and moving your “head camera” forward along the Z-axis for iron sight/optic view (phase 2).

If this is the case, how do you make an adjustment like this? Is it a matter of changing a few numbers in a file or do you have to use a 3D modeling, animating and rendering program like Maya, LightWave, or Oxygen, which means we have to wait for the tools to be released?

If you made it this far, thanks for spending the time to read this long post.
If you have comments/suggestions/advice, please respond.

Thanks,
Rg

Victor_S.

Jan 21 2007, 22:42

Although I somewhat agree with you on first person view, I think the iron sights are fine.

Col. Faulkner

Jan 21 2007, 23:43

Jan 22 2007, 01:01

I think you both missed the point. I am talking about the zoom applied to the iron sight/optic view, not the placement of the rifle in iron sight/optic view.

Did you look at the animation I posted? I think it shows what I mean pretty clearly....... http://img62.imageshack.us/img62/1899/gunmodeanimation3small2ax.gif

I also updated my first post to make this clearer by adding a picture of the iron sight/optic view under the default iron sight/optic view for comparison.

Abs_01

Jan 22 2007, 01:53

So, is this an addon or a mod you're making, or what? http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/whistle.gif

Abs

Chipper

Jan 22 2007, 06:54

K, the only thing I don't like is the gun taking up half the ****ing screen.

like this http://img144.imageshack.us/img144/970/gunmodeanimationsmall7fv.gif

MrZig

Jan 22 2007, 07:00

I agree on the moving the head instead of zooming factor. Looks a lot better and could have more interesting fire fights - you won't always know exactly what you're shooting at.

Jan 23 2007, 03:11

So, is this an addon or a mod you're making, or what? http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/whistle.gif

Abs
Thanks for not reading the "closing" section.

K, the only thing I don't like is the gun taking up half the ****ing screen.

like this http://img144.imageshack.us/img144/970/gunmodeanimationsmall7fv.gif
And I quote......"Sorry for my poor Photoshop skills, as this animation is clearly not accurate, but this should give you a clearer understanding of what I mean. Of course the perspective and other things are slightly off (the butt of the gun should be slightly more inward towards the center and the gun shouldn’t be as high and slanted, ect...), but you should be able to see what I’m getting at."

Victor_S.

Jan 23 2007, 03:20

I understood what you are saying, but like was said, the zoomed out iron sight would look weird and I think it would be impractical. And despite your photoshoping skills moving the gun around in first person would block to much of the screen. In real life you can look around easily and you have a better view than a computer monitor can give you. I think the way bis did it is a good comprimise.

Max Power

Jan 23 2007, 04:35

Although I somewhat agree with you on first person view, I think the iron sights are fine.
Yes, the sights view is fine as it is (one can argue about the
amount of zoom but the position of the rifle looks adequate).
Your "non-zoomed" one looks like you are holding the rifle out
at arms length.
Yeah it looks like he's resting the butt-plate on his chin.

Although, it's sort of weird that rg included that shot because it really isn't what he's talking about. He's saying that the iron sights shouldn't start out zoomed. Playing wgl with the slightly wider view aspect was pretty good, actually.

In all seriousness, I think rg should consider revamping his post. Quite frankly, I think noone wants to read that much on anything on a forum, nevermind an exhaustive meditation nitpicking fields-of-view.

What he wants to do shouldn't be difficult, though. All I've seen on fields of view tweaking is with WGL, and they had a pretty different system going for almost everything they did.. I've seen the code, though, that describes the fields of view, and it isn't tough to crack!

edit: Additionally, there are seperate cameras for the weapon sight and for the avatar's eye. One really doesn't have much to do with the other. The characters don't move their eyes to the weapon sites so much as their... vision... patches to an invisible camera located in some other location. For most handheld weapons, that camera is behind the sights. Adjusting that field of view to match the field of view in the forehead cam should just be a matter of copying and pasting values.

Big Dawg KS

Jan 23 2007, 15:00

ParaGraphic L

Jan 23 2007, 15:33

It could be that the FOV is not totally correct then, or it does not simulate the view from your eyes correct

Max Power

Jan 23 2007, 16:06

Since the first person view in ArmA represents an accurate perspective of the 3rd person anim, changing it would mean your 3rd person animation would look wrong. Since the first person view is a exactly the same animationwise and the camera is located properly in the head, and the 3rd person anim looks perfectly fine, one can conclude that the first person view is accurate, and that if it were not it would defy the laws of physics. http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/crazy_o.gif
I have no idea what you're talking about. If you change zoom with a handheld camera, does it defy the laws of physics somehow?

Are you joking? I'm confused!

Quote[/b] ]
It could be that the FOV is not totally correct then, or it does not simulate the view from your eyes correct

No, it's actually quite impossible at this point to simulate the view from one's eyes correctly. The field of view is quite restricted, and then there's all that other stuff that you can read below if you're interested. If you increase the field of view, everything else gets much smaller, like a fish-eyed lense... so it's quite a trade off!

Human eyesight is 180 degree field of view, with greater detail in the centre than at the out-skirts. Humans can see in great definition, allowing you to identify objects such as sailboats at a distance at where curvature of the earther begins to partially obscure the boat. Humans eyesight has the capacity to sense contrast ratios of 1,000,000:1 (if allowed to adjust).

The game, currently, allows you to see in a 90 degree field of view. You have to zoom in to identify pixelated blobs of colour at 200 yards. The 8 bit HDR allows for a contrast ratio of 256:1, which isn't that bad considering that if your monitor is less than top of the line, you're probably looking at a contrast ratio there of 500:1 at best.

Sled88

Jan 23 2007, 18:26

I can't change the Fov... Or better I changed it in the bin config... but nothign changed in the game.... Already tried every fov option in the config LOL http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/whistle.gif

-HUNTER-

Jan 24 2007, 00:28

widescreen

Jan 24 2007, 03:52

NEW VIDEO - Iron Sight Issues (http://files.filefront.com//;6596918;;/)

This is a video that explains the iron sight issues and the difference between having a low FOV (default) and high FOV (modified) in iron sight/optic mode and also the possibility of having freeaim. I made this kind of quick even though it took a few hours, but I hope this makes things clearer.

I also added a new picture for the first section with comments in green and red.
---------------------------------------------------

Thanks plaintiff1,
Finally I get a decent reply. I know it’s a long “exhaustive” read, but I wanted to be as detailed as possible, but it’s almost as if people are just looking at the pictures and not reading the text so they don’t comprehend the overall idea.

manhunter09,
Thanks for the very useful post. http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/icon_rolleyes.gif

Sled88,
You have to change the optic values in the weapon config.

MrZig

Jan 24 2007, 06:02

That video cleared a lot of things up, and very well done. And I agree with you 100%. http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/smile_o.gif

450R

Jan 24 2007, 07:25

Some very good points. I can understand why the default sight view is zoomed (to compensate for looking at a world through a comparitively tiny screen) but it's retarded for the iron sights and Aimpoint.

Looking forward to more progress!

Sled88

Jan 24 2007, 10:14

@<hidden>: Thanx a lot! http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/smile_o.gif

Dallas

Jan 24 2007, 14:33

Great idea for an unofficial mod or addon.

However I don't believe you can or should have both iron sight accuracy and fullview awareness. When you decide to use sights effectively, your focus shifts and will increase your accuracy, but at the cost of perifial awareness.

I think this mod would work against the premesis of the game, but as I said, I've got no beefs with gameplay changes in unofficial addons.

Jan 25 2007, 23:09

I’m glad people finally understand. I guess the video was worth it then.

- The one big question though is, how do you change the position of your head cam? Any modder ever come across this?

- Is it a matter of changing a few numbers in a file or do you have to use a 3D modeling, animating, and rendering program like Maya, LightWave, or Oxygen, which means we have to wait for the tools to be released?

However I don't believe you can or should have both iron sight accuracy and fullview awareness.
Well we are already limited to ~90 degrees on our monitor when our real eyes have ~180 as plaintiff1 pointed out. Something can hopefully be worked out though. Anything from more gun sway/gun shake/(insert idea here).

When you decide to use sights effectively, your focus shifts and will increase your accuracy, but at the cost of perifial awareness.
Yes, but how easy is it for you (if your holding a rifle in real life) to keep your head and gun in the ready to fire position while looking all around with just your eyes? It would just take a fraction of a second to return your eyes to the sight and fire. You wouldn’t lower your gun completely to get a better view like you do in game. Even when looking at our computer monitor, our eyes still scan and only focus on one thing at a time. I hope that made some sense (quick reply without much thought because I'm in a rush), http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/crazy_o.gif

Dallas

Jan 26 2007, 17:04

However I don't believe you can or should have both iron sight accuracy and fullview awareness.
Well we are already limited to ~90 degrees on our monitor when our real eyes have ~180 as plaintiff1 pointed out. Something can hopefully be worked out though. Anything from more gun sway/gun shake/(insert idea here).

When you decide to use sights effectively, your focus shifts and will increase your accuracy, but at the cost of perifial awareness.
Yes, but how easy is it for you (if your holding a rifle in real life) to keep your head and gun in the ready to fire position while looking all around with just your eyes? It would just take a fraction of a second to return your eyes to the sight and fire. You wouldn’t lower your gun completely to get a better view like you do in game. Even when looking at our computer monitor, our eyes still scan and only focus on one thing at a time. I hope that made some sense (quick reply without much thought because I'm in a rush), http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/crazy_o.gif
I stand firm.

I'm not limited to a mere 90 degrees. I use the +180 freelook constantly. Turning your eyes simply isn't enough. You got to turn your whole head, for a decent wide angle situational awareness. and it takes more than a fraction of a second to regain a perfect sight picture for the avarage rifleman.

Training will help you minimize your response time in the game as in reality.

Max Power

Mar 8 2007, 00:19

Edit:

I've found the information I'm looking for! Pointless post :/

Corkey

Mar 8 2007, 01:10

I have had a similar experience just a few hours ago while playing the campaign. My head was locked to the gun and I couldn't "Drop" the weapon to a low ready stance. The result being: I was killed by two OPFOR hiding behind my gun. As you have stated, it would be nice to have "Weapon Ready" system, where you could drop your stance to match the desired level of focus.

During CQB - Entry, it's often best to keep the gun at "Low ready," where the gun is at the shoulder but tucked against the body. When initially entering an area where you have detected hostile presence, it's best to go in with a "On guard" stance, where the gun is shouldered and raised but out of your line of sight. Once a target is acquired, you can simply "Snap" your weapon up and fire. For longer range work you can use a "High ready" stance, where your weapon is shouldered and in your lower line of sight. Once a ranged target has been identified, the weapon is raised and you draw a bead on the target.

As far as sights and FOV goes, from my personal experience, your FOV doesn't change at all, only your focus. When using iron sights your line of sight and FOV is severely reduced, simply because you are concentrating on keeping the sights aligned and the target centered. As far as open optic sights go, you can peer through the glass for precise shots or you can simply hold the weapon at high ready and the red dot "floats" out into the center of your vision. The prior method is extremely useful for closed areas where you need to be able to aim accurately without blocking off your line of sight.

A side note on iron sights and view movement. While on the move, you can turn your head, while keeping the weapon trained on a target, then "snap" back to the target without a whole lot of adjustment. Granted, if you are really moving, the sight isn't always going to be where it is supposed to be.

In the end, iron sight control and stance preference will differ greatly from individual to individual. You have brought up a valid point about the FOV / camera switch when using the iron sight mode. It doesn't happen in real life as ARMA currently portrays it. As much as I'd love to have eyes that can zoom in and change FOV like that, it just isn't going to happen. Additionally it's down right distracting, having the camera switch FOVs when I go into zoom mode. Not only can I see less but it also takes away the challenge of having to concentrate on what I'm aiming at.

To sum up my feelings about the issue: "I do not find the "Auto Zoom" feature helpful, when switching to iron / closed sights. Additionally I support the addition of a "Weapon Ready" and "Precision Movement" system to ARMA."

Mar 13 2007, 02:20

Sorry, didn’t know anyone made a post in my topic until I saw someone else mention it, heh.

Good post Corkey. I’m hoping something ingenious for CQB is somehow developed.

I’m really happy with the fact that they unlocked the view in iron sight mode for patch 1.05.

As far as my iron sight “fix” goes, good news, at least when to tools come out. As I suspected, I now know for a fact that the fish eye problem with the gun can be fixed by moving your “eye” point forward for each gun’s p3d file, but maybe there is a quicker/easier way?, I don’t know.

Currently as it stands in the game, as I mentioned before, the eye point is at the very back butt of the guns when you go into iron sight mode, so when you get rid of the FOV change when going into iron sight mode (the initial zoom applied when you PRESS optics, not HOLD the zoom button), you need to move your eye point forward to compensate, which will fix the fish eye look.

Hopefully I (and/or others) can make these changes soon if the tools come out. http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/thumbs-up.gif

Max Power

Mar 13 2007, 02:34

You need the eye to be at the weapon's point of pivot or else the sights will go out of alignment when you move them around your view.

I've been playing with some values, and the sights don't look that fisheyed if you use values close to the default eye value, but slightly lower.

Rick Rawlings

Mar 14 2007, 01:35

Well, as someone with a 17" monitor, I kinda need that first zoom. In every game where this has been modeled, I have always understood this to represent your "focus" as you look down the sights, limiting your attention to other things. When I am target practicing, I am concentrating on hitting the target and my buddies could be making faces at me off to the side and I probably wouldn't notice it. I agree that for someone using no ccrosshairs a better unsighted view would be useful for close-in shots where you are surpirsed. I suppose nothing will ever be perfect on a computer screen where you are sitting two feet away from your in-game weapon. Keep in mind that all of this is just me supposing and I am certainly not above being convinced otherwise. As it is now, I kinda like the iron sight system.