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[WxTech]

I've decided to build collision boxes for such insubstantial things as masking nets differently.

Currently, the collision box is a single item enclosing the entirety of the item. In order to reflect its delicate construction, the panzer value is typically made quite small. But this approach is a poor reflection of reality. Suppose you want to strafe a plane sitting under a net. Your first few hits have to destroy the net, then can subsequent hits on the plane occur.

In reality, hosing down a net will have most rounds passing between or through the netting/camo patches, with little by way of a visual destruction. The thing will likely be still largely standing, until an explosion or fire occur.

I propose to make the hit box very small. Actually, four skinny boxes coinciding with the four vertical poles supporting the net. In this way, strafing will tend to leave the net intact, unless some lucky hits on the poles are scored. And any nearby explosion will still destroy the net, as usual.

This would allow non-stationary planes to actually use these nets. A mission can start with the player under a net, without blowing upon upon mission start. To facilitate egress, the hit boxes could be moved a bit farther outward, so that a grazing of a pole will not blow you up. 

Other masking/camo/tent type structures can be similarly dealt with. For example, there's an object (in several flavours) that has a tarp or net roof supported by 4 poles, and with stout sides of a shorter height constructed of logs/timber. This object can have a hit box fitting each of these side walls only, and with high panzer values so as to make strafing through them impossible or difficult. But the roof is no impediment, and one can shoot through it without the structure first having to be destroyed (due to the current hit box enclosing the whole thing.)

As mentioned, I've already adjusted hit boxes for some open storage sheds so that one can strafe under the roof.

By way of an update, I currently have over 60 building structures fixed up with new/better shadows, hit boxes and no more flashing farthest LODs.

[Mick]

... congrats for these very promising and much needed improvements ...! 

[WxTech]

An example of the reduced collision box scheme for things like masking nets. Here the former overall collision box that enveloped the entire object--and hence resulted in your destruction if you touched it anywhere--has been reduced to being co-located with the four main vertical posts. Now you can drive a plane under there--as long as the wingspan permits. 

[WxTech]

And another...

[WxTech]

More twiddling about with masking nets.

In this 4-panel pic I show on the right the stock implementation of a particular masking net, and on the left a different way to handle it. The top 2 panels show the view from near ground level, and the lower 2 show a more oblique view. The first of each pair is from nearby, and the second from farther away.

The stock form uses transparency for blending. But this has the odd effect of partly or even completely making disappear other objects seen through it. From farther away, a point is reached where the relative fractional area of the transparency region becomes so large that objects are rendered largely or fully invisible. But their shadows remain fully visible!

I don't like this. From nearby the camouflaging aspect is extremely minimal, whereas from farther away it's like a 'magic veil' has been drawn. Too inconsistent. And from near view distances we always have the ugly edges where the transparency transitionl causes narrow bands of object invisibility.

My preference is to eschew blending for the near and intermediate view distances. The downside is that this does have the effect of a more 'ragged' or coarse appearance for thinner parts of the texture, such as the netting twine. But this is a price I'm willing to pay in order to avoid the even uglier 'disappearing act'.

I'd love to hear your thoughts! Because mine is never the last word on a matter. 

[WxTech]

After adjusting the collision box scheme for older stock masking nets (where I made skinny boxes for just the upright posts), I discovered that for the Mongolya series of nets the modeler had done just that! Great minds think alike, I guess. 

But those Mongolya nets did include a 'roof' collision box as well, which I got rid of. Leaving just the ones for the posts.

[Mick]

My preference is to eschew blending for the near and intermediate view distances. The downside is that this does have the effect of a more 'ragged' or coarse appearance for thinner parts of the texture, such as the netting twine. But this is a price I'm willing to pay in order to avoid the even uglier 'disappearing act'.

I'd love to hear your thoughts! Because mine is never the last word on a matter. 

... I, too, by far, prefer this choice ... 

[Epervier]

I didn't understand anything... but I prefer the masking nets of the left! 
Those on the right are not hiding anything... 

[WxTech]

After some more tweaking of the .mat and .tga files for the stock summer and winter masking nets, to refine the final approach that'll be applied to all such nets. My principal emphasis is application in game play, to have the nets work more like they're supposed to. In order to obtain good consistency over a large range of view distance, the 'prettiness' factor is lacking at closer view distances.

There is no use of transparency, and so there's no magical complete disappearance of stuff under the net at moderate to longer view distance. The behaviour is reasonably consistent from close up out to the disappearance of the net.

To aid in more effective blending with the terrain textures, I've made all netting surface normals identical, oriented vertically. This eliminates shadowing on surfaces at different tilts/orientations, making for a uniform illumination over the entire net. This is not too unrealistic considering the irregularity of the material attached to the net.