Realistic head/neck movement for the Viggen especially in relation to the HUD?

[sc_neo]

So, i have played around with PeterP's old "Proper neck" mod which essentially moved the eyepoint a bit forward and upward to simulate a proper neck, i.e. that our eyes are not placed at the same spot on the top of our spine where we actually turn and tilt our head.

 

 

 

Back in 2011 it seems ED did not have any of this implemented for their own modules and the eyepoint was the same as the pivot point. If one takes a look at the server.lua we now see ED has implemented this for all the newer and reworked modules that i own, including the FC3 ones like Su-25T/27/33 and F-15C, Mig-29, L-39. The A-10C does not have this, but i assume this will change with the upcoming graphics and cockpit improvements.

 

 

 

The server.lua contains a section that looks like this;

 

 

"

 

function default_fighter_player(t)

local res = {

CameraViewAngleLimits = {20.000000,140.000000},

CameraAngleRestriction = {false ,90.000000,0.500000},

EyePoint = {0.05 ,0.000000 ,0.000000},

limits_6DOF = {x = {-0.050000,0.4500000},y ={-0.300000,0.100000},z = {-0.220000,0.220000},roll = 90.000000},

Allow360rotation = false,

CameraAngleLimits = {200,-80.000000,110.000000},

ShoulderSize = 0.2, -- move body when azimuth value more then 90 degrees

}

if t then

for i,o in pairs(t) do

res = o

end

end

return res

end

 

 

"

 

 

Thus all ED planes that rely on the "function default_fighter_player(t)" for those viewpoint values have the eyepoint moved 5cm foward from the pivot point. The second value should actually raisethe eyepoint in cm, but altering this value i did not see a difference in the eyepoint position in the cockpit, but when rotating the head, there is a slight displacement and your eyes seem to not rotate on a needle pin anymore but circumscribe a circle of whatever cm value you put in there. And yeah, the human neck probably does not work in perfect circles and such, but it can still be approximated better i reckon.

 

 

Now one important aspect that i did not know anything about before looking into this, is that a collimated HUD is only centred in the HUD frame when looked at from a very specific position, and moving your head in any direction moves the HUD to the sides until you gradually loose more and more of it. We can see this in the Viggen happening when we actually move are viewpoint to the left or right, up or down. But when simply looking around i.e. turning our head from left to right for instance, there is no HUD displacement happening at all, which it should if our eyes were not placed extactly on the pivot point back in our neck. Unless i am missing something thats special about the Viggen's HUD, of course!

 

 

So, i encourage Heatblur to take a look at this and add a "proper neck" where the eyes are roughly placed 5cm in front and 6-7cm above the pivot point. And do note, if you move the eyepoint 5cm forward, you need to adjust the actual pivot point position 5cm backwards to to have the same FOV and feeling like before, but i am not entirely sure how this needs to be worked around.

 

 

I don't own the F-14, but i assume it's not implemented there either...so guys, go for it!:megalol:

Edited June 3, 2019 by sc_neo