Walk-around Animation

[Tank50us]

One thing that would be kinda interesting, at least to me, is when the Airfields are reworked and the ground crew added, if we could see the pilot doing a walk-around of the aircraft while we're selecting the weapons or in the 'briefing' screen. An interesting thing to add to that is that once we're "ready to fly", we get an animation of our pilot climbing into the pit, the ground crew pulling the ladder, and the crew chief giving you a thumbs-up to indicate the crew is clear and you're ok to start the plane (maybe even giving you the gesture to start the engine(s)?), and then moving away.

What do you guys think? Personally, I think the latter half would be good for immersion, especially those in VR (if they can 'strap in'), and externally, players can toggle it on or off if they can't handle the extra animations going on around them.

[cfrag]

6 hours ago, Tank50us said:

if we could see the pilot doing a walk-around of the aircraft while we're selecting the weapons or in the 'briefing' screen.

While I agree that this would be a nice touch, I also think that would be one of the candy-cotton additions that we enjoy once, and ignore in all subsequent instances; it doesn't bring anything to the table except a graphical novelty.

6 hours ago, Tank50us said:

An interesting thing to add to that is that once we're "ready to fly", we get an animation of our pilot climbing into the pit, the ground crew pulling the ladder, and the crew chief giving you a thumbs-up to indicate the crew is clear and you're ok to start the plane (maybe even giving you the gesture to start the engine(s)?), and then moving away.

And I would starting pulling out my (already thinning) hair if thanks to some animations, I'd have to wait for it to finish before I could proceed to the cockpit. I'd want to skip this probably even for the first iteration, as it does nothing for me except getting in my way.

6 hours ago, Tank50us said:

I think the latter half would be good for immersion, especially those in VR

HELL NO if that in any way involves moving the HMD by itself, which can be vomit-inducing to many players. Remember the into to the "Rising Squall" campaign where the camera (position and angle) is driven by a script? Yeah, bad times. I really don't want this in VR. If I have to walk around my aircraft, I want to do it on my time, my way (one of the things I like when I fly DCS is that I can skip that boring inspection part and jump right into my seat).

Other than that - yeah, we really, really need more and better animated ground crew, and desperately need some civilian 'units' as well.

[Tank50us]

5 minutes ago, cfrag said:

And I would starting pulling out my (already thinning) hair if thanks to some animations, I'd have to wait for it to finish before I could proceed to the cockpit. I'd want to skip this probably even for the first iteration, as it does nothing for me except getting in my way.

It takes what? Maybe a minute from the moment the pilot is in the pit until the Crew Chief is clear of the aircraft? It'll probably take that long for everything to properly load around you anyway.

But, as you know from other posts for eye candy, I am always in favor of it being optional.

10 minutes ago, cfrag said:

Other than that - yeah, we really, really need more and better animated ground crew, and desperately need some civilian 'units' as well.

Very much this. And in the animation you may not necessarily see them attaching the weapons to the aircraft (that is a process that takes about 10-20min IRL), but you'll see the weapons on their karts or ejector racks when attached to the aircraft. This wouldn't go full immersion, but it would give the player something more visual when selecting their weapons load. If done right, the player could even interact with some of the weapons, namely setting fuses, laser codes (especially since that last bit is done on the ground anyway), and GPS coordinates (maybe with a clickable map to represent the programming even?)

[fagulha]

I do always my walkaround in VR (and even go by car/bus to the ramp), so, i don´t want/need any animation that would take my walkaround from me. And usually animations like that don´t work well for VR due to the fact it induces nausea.

[Tank50us]

2 minutes ago, fagulha said:

I do always my walkaround in VR (and even go by car/bus to the ramp), so, i don´t want/need any animation that would take my walkaround from me. And usually animations like that don´t work well for VR due to the fact it induces nausea.

The walk-around would be an external view of the aircraft, similar to the view VR users have of the Su33. The pilot/GIB would be just walking among the ground crew.

[draconus]

Watching it? No!

Doing it? Yes!

Ground crew - the more detailed, interactive and animated the better.

2 hours ago, Tank50us said:

similar to the view VR users have of the Su33

Can you explain?

Edited February 28 by draconus

[cfrag]

1 hour ago, draconus said:

3 hours ago, Tank50us said:

similar to the view VR users have of the Su33

Can you explain?

I *believe* @Tank50us is talking about the VR 'hangar' that we see when in VR while looking at a DCS window. It by default shows an Su-27 inside a hangar, in full 3D splendor, and can be configured (undocumented, of course) to show others. It's static, we can't really move inside the scene, though. It's one of the most sadly underused cool features that is tantalizing every VR user each time we get into DCS

 

Edited February 28 by cfrag

[draconus]

OK, I thought I missed some cool feature of the Su-33 module.

3 hours ago, Tank50us said:

The walk-around would be an external view of the aircraft

I'd call it first person view of the pilot (pov) doing the walkaround.

[cfrag]

4 hours ago, Tank50us said:

It takes what? Maybe a minute from the moment the pilot is in the pit until the Crew Chief is clear of the aircraft?

A frigging minute???? I'm not the average DCS user - I spend a lot of time designing missions. If you force me to watch a one-minute animation each time that I want to test some mission aspect, you'll soon find me up a tower, brandishing a large-caliber rifle, giggling hysterically... If it's optional, fine with me.

[Schlingel mit Kringel]

I am on the fence with this.

If it was a loading screen replacement, it would be just a generic animation as the camera can not walk around in a mission that is in the process of being loaded. Also this scene would need to be loaded too, slowing actual mission loading. I'd rather have that dev time spent on speeding up the loading process.

If it was an additional animated minute long scene that comes on top of the loading wait, i agree with cfrag: looks nice the first two times, then you want an option to skip it. Would be a waste of dev time for little to zero improvement.

What i could imagine though, but this is way off and would need a lot of changes within DCS, so it is unlikely to happen: give mission designers optional "pilot" slots in addition to the aircraft slots. So we can spawn as a pilot, walk to the a plane of choice (which would all need to be placed then already, with its impact on performance) and then have a short (! maybe 10 seconds) boarding animation climbing the ladder and taking seat - having the ladder removed while you already have control in the cockpit.
This interaction with aircraft would then also open the door to further things like (all optional) pre-flight walkaround with crew interaction or picking up ejected player pilots - i know, sitting on a field is not a looked for game element at glance, but diving into this, it would give interesting options for example to "one life" (PvP) missions (have spare planes ready but only one life per player, so rescue operations by heli pilots would be vital) which then could also involve Combined Arms elements to counter enemy pilot rescue. Would make learning emergency procedures rewarding as it gives you a chance to get closer to own territory and keep playing. There is already servers out there that give players X lives in a certain role (CAP, CAS...) that get spent when you eject and refresh after X hours, so i do not think this would be of zero interest to the community. But like said, pretty far stretch from OP. Thought i share it anyways.

[Tank50us]

8 hours ago, cfrag said:

A frigging minute???? I'm not the average DCS user - I spend a lot of time designing missions. If you force me to watch a one-minute animation each time that I want to test some mission aspect, you'll soon find me up a tower, brandishing a large-caliber rifle, giggling hysterically... If it's optional, fine with me.

I mean, in a scramble situation, it's even less. I don't know about other countries, but the USAF that dude is off the ladder, and has yeeted it in ten seconds. Meanwhile the pilot is clipping the straps in place. A minute would be them being casual about it, so the real time it takes is probably less than 30sec.

Heck, it could just be the few seconds of the pilot getting in and putting the straps on (which itself is like... a few seconds?), and while you're doing your BIT test in the Viper the ladder is moved away followed by the CC going "You're clear for startup". The straps bit could also be hidden from view if the pilots body is hidden, but you'd still see the ground crew pull the ladder, and probably the pins/covers before clearing the aircraft.

[cfrag]

7 hours ago, Tank50us said:

it's even less.

I believe I understand the general direction of your suggestion. If this animation can be skipped and is entirely optional, sure - it could show off some mad animation skilz present at ED. But if there is in any way some mandatory, presentational stuff that I have to sit through, that does not hand me control at the earliest possible time, I will hate it. Because it wastes my time, with (for me) no added value. When I develop missions, I already waste inordinate amounts of time because ME and the mission can't run concurrently - I have to wait between ME and the mission, with DCS's typically abysmal loading times. If I now have to look at some animation over and over again, that would drive me up the walls. On an average day that I develop a mission, I start that mission (for debugging purposes) 6 to 10 times an hour. What I don't need is to watch an animation each and every time that mission starts up. Worse when I switch planes (all the missions I develop have multiple planes).

Optionally? Heck yeah - maybe I'd even look the second time it plays.  

[WinterH]

I'd rather see no effort put into this, and said effort used in, for example, improving AI infantry and their animations, which would add incomparably more to DCS experience in my opinion. I can imagine a whole host of things I'd rather see before this.

And if this is ever added, I'd only not hate it if it's completely optional. So I can maybe enjoy it once or twice, and happily turn it off for rest of the time.

[draconus]

4 minutes ago, WinterH said:

I'd rather see no effort put into this, and said effort used in, for example, improving AI infantry and their animations

Oh, and I'd rather have all people on board to make FF F-15C, stop wasting time for DCS development and bugs fixing or other modules.

[Tank50us]

28 minutes ago, WinterH said:

I'd rather see no effort put into this, and said effort used in, for example, improving AI infantry and their animations, which would add incomparably more to DCS experience in my opinion. I can imagine a whole host of things I'd rather see before this.

And if this is ever added, I'd only not hate it if it's completely optional. So I can maybe enjoy it once or twice, and happily turn it off for rest of the time.

I mean, most of the animations could be ported to infantry units just fine, especially the climbing-ladders animation and salutes. If ED adopts a "common rig" for all human animations, then it would make it possible for such animations to be used by armored troops like those at a FARP reloading helicopters.

[AegisFX]

Nah. This teeters too much on the edge of tedium vs "immersion". 

I could give depth to my view but ultimately most of us would immediately skip it. A lot of workload for devs and for us for so little reward that it would genuinely be easier to just hang out at your local airport FBO and ask the mil pilots that come thru for selfies

[draconus]

5 hours ago, AegisFX said:

I could give depth to my view but ultimately most of us would immediately skip it. A lot of workload for devs and for us for so little reward...

You could say the same about cold start, waiting for INS, taxi a mile to runway yet many do that - it's part of a pilot job. But I repeat I'm against just watching the animation.

[cfrag]

11 hours ago, draconus said:

You could say the same about cold start, waiting for INS, taxi a mile to runway yet many do that

Some like to do that, even I. The big point here is that it can be skipped. And yes, I regard a cold-start as tedious busy-work 90% of the time (especially the Apache, yet I'm kind of fond of the C-Hog's start-up proc).

11 hours ago, draconus said:

it's part of a pilot job

And it's the job of good game designers to take away the tedium and refine the fun aspects. For example, your walk around the aircraft (pointless unless there is a chance that we find something amiss, and shelving your flight 25%-50% of the time because your bird isn't fit is not what people would enjoy much), as well as pre/post briefings, METAR study and W&B are all thankfully skipped, even if they can (from a timer perspective) make up to 50% of the entire flight. Yet even if all that was in DCS, they are all active parts, things we engage in. Watching the chief and some people scurry around your plane for a minute is dead time, and will - subjectively - feel much, much longer.

One method to strip the tedium is to allow people to skip the those parts (and DCS delivers in spades here). Truth be told. I'd enjoy taxiing much more if ED invested more into Tarmac/Ground AI, and I'm looking forward to if/when it arrives together with the improved Tower/Approach AI. 

[Slippa]

I almost always cold start and would like some groundcrew animated. The idea of doing a walk around I’m not so sure about for the same reasons people have already pointed out. We’d likely skip it. I agree with Cfrag, it’s not something we’d enjoy, finding something amiss and jumping in another slot. Unless a ground crew rolled a tug out to swap you another plane and even that could get tired, we have random failures already.

I’d go for ground crew and add some life to the airfields. Definitely ATC improvements too.

[twistking]

I would really enjoy the option to spawn as a pilot and then walk to and climb in my aircraft. I think it would be a great immersive element.
Those aircraft just hit differently when looking at them as a fragile, little human.

Wasn't that - at least at some point - part of the pitch of the supercarrier module? Spawning in briefing room and then making your way to the flight deck? Maybe it was just me wanting to read it that way...

Edited March 7 by twistking

[diego999]

I'd really enjoy the ability to climb down the aircraft.

When I land after a successful mission, do all the shutdown procedure and I remain in the dark cockpit with the engines off; I'd love to be able to get down and stand beside my plane.

It's a stupid detail really, but I'd really like the idea.

Edited March 8 by diego999

[average_pilot]

On 3/8/2024 at 4:01 AM, diego999 said:

I'd really enjoy the ability to climb down the aircraft.

When I land after a successful mission, do all the shutdown procedure and I remain in the dark cockpit with the engines off; I'd love to be able to get down and stand beside my plane.

It's a stupid detail really, but I'd really like the idea.

 

I feel exactly the same. I usually stay in the cockpit for a while trying to compensate for that "incompleteness" feeling, wishing so much to be able to step out of the cockpit and behold the magnificent machine in which I have just lived such a nice little adventure. I mean, I can use the external cameras, which I do, profusely, after that staying in the cockpit ritual, but somehow it's not the same if it's not part of the game mechanics.

[Exorcet]

I'm not so interested in a preset animation, but being able to walk around the plane before start up would be useful, especially if external views are disabled in a server (check if F-5 airbrakes are fully stowed, etc).

[cfrag]

On 3/8/2024 at 4:01 AM, diego999 said:

I'd really enjoy the ability to climb down the aircraft.

TBH, if this was entirely optional and supported in VR, I'd love this as well.

On 3/8/2024 at 4:01 AM, diego999 said:

When I land after a successful mission, do all the shutdown procedure and I remain in the dark cockpit with the engines off; I'd love to be able to get down and stand beside my plane.

I feel the same, even though I don't need a shutdown of the plane at all. Simply being able to exit the plane (or chopper!) in its current state, even if we could only stand in one spot - silly as that may seem, but that would scratch an itch I have. 

[Silver_Dragon]

CH-47F preorder video, show new infantry animations...