3rd persion camera

[DFDelta]

Yeah, and once free-looking, headtracking and VR-Glasses are fully supported we could also have the option to deactivate the HUD and add all HUD-functions to your mechs control console and cockpit-screens instead and full support of the steel battalion controller and all of its buttons. 

This would be the day I quit my job, leave my girlfriend and never leave my room again 

[(TLL)Siilk]

This would be the day I quit my job, leave my girlfriend and never leave my room again 

Planning to hold a non-stop MWLL massacre till the food runs out? Count me in!

[MatthewPryde]

That'd be the day my girl would bother to play fps' since her complaint is she aims too slow. Bring on the VR

[Snowman]

It would seem that by the year the year game is staged in, a third person view would already be developed. We are already working on it.

[OmniNept]

@Masakari

If that was meant to be sarcasm, please, keep it to yourself.

Still none of your points convince me at all. Having such an option would NOT make the mod any worse. Instead it could even make your community base a bit bigger, but from what I see you want to keep it under "sim", where it obviously does not belong. I know it may sound harsh, but really - I do appreciate all your work on this mod, but claiming it's a sim with Unreal-like BA combat and weird behaving vehicles and aerotech isn't really a sim. I do realize most of you will disagree, but this is how it looks like currently. Having an option, I say it again, AN OPTION, would not destroy in any way the way the mod is played. Most of the servers would have 1st person turned on so it wouldn't be a big issue if a couple of people would be playing on a totally different server with external views turned on.

And yes, I do know the battletech universe, and no, 3rd person has nothing to do with wrecking immersion or anything. Especially, as mentioned before, it could be an option. Someone wants to be "super awesome elite" and play on full reality servers (if it can be said about battletech), it's fine. Someone wants to watch your really cool looking mechs and in the meantime kill some enemies - it's also fine. Everyone would play on different servers and no harm would be done to either sides.

It's not merely an impact on immersion - it's an impact on game balance.  Third-person perspective promotes camping by allowing pilots to peer over and around obstacles.  Anyone with a height advantage could situate themselves just beneath the crest of a hill and easily locate approaching enemies using third-person, take aim, crest for the shot, and then retreat.  In essence, it nullifies the importance of reaction times, of intelligent approaches, and of the naturally occurring skill gaps between players.

Planetside is a wonderful example of a game whose FPS component slid downhill after the popularization of third-person perspective.  You can see some of the lame-waddery in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSfG5CMJieE&feature=related

The section after 1:43 is particularly relevant. 



I strongly encourage the developers to stick with their initial decision on this matter and to remove third-person perspective before it becomes a staple.

[(TLL)BlueOrb]

Having given this some thought somthing that would be possible is if a mech or ba could deploy a (destroyable or time limited) camera. Said camera could then be accessed or possibly shared through C3? Just an idea i remember from Tribes. Thinking about it again.....could a ba use a camera weapon to be shared by mechs? How bout drones deployed from the airfield. Gotta be other possibilities here.

[Taemien]

I'm not sure this is an issue with Crysis, but in MW4 there was a nasty exploit players used way too much using Third Person. Basically you could use the view to target a mech, once the cursor was 'red' you could fire and hit the target regardless of what was in the way. This allowed players to shoot through buildings and hills. The weapons would impact the obstruction, but the target would still take damage (and just damage, no rockback or anything that let you know you just got hit).

If this is a problem in Crysis, then this will need to be fixed asap. As another person said, its not about immersion, its about balance and exploitability.

[Sumptin]

I'm not sure this is an issue with Crysis, but in MW4 there was a nasty exploit players used way too much using Third Person. Basically you could use the view to target a mech, once the cursor was 'red' you could fire and hit the target regardless of what was in the way. This allowed players to shoot through buildings and hills. The weapons would impact the obstruction, but the target would still take damage (and just damage, no rockback or anything that let you know you just got hit).

If this is a problem in Crysis, then this will need to be fixed asap. As another person said, its not about immersion, its about balance and exploitability.

Not an issue as far as I've experienced. For instance, I can see the enemy mech (in first person) and fire, but if my arm is still behind a rock my round just impacts it.

I want to say I remember that in the older canon, MW pilots wore fully enclosed helms that projected the battlefield on the inside. It was a 360' view compressed to fit in front of the pilots face. It also used the pilots sense of balance, no? I'm old and tend to obscure my memory so I may be fabricating it.

I don't mind 3rd person, but I do know that in "modern" BT one of the benefits of certain mechs was the size of the view from the cockpit (or even a disadvantage as it may be more open to a head shot). I consider it a balance point, myself. You can't really cite modern RL tech as examples simply because RL has already surpassed the BT universe in many aspects. The M1A1 MBT, for instance, isn't manually aimed by it's crew, per se. It's locked on to a target and follows it pretty flawlessly. That'd make this a boring game, no? 

- Bogeyman

[TWC_Verto]

I'll say this much and put my 2cents in,

LEARN how to drive in a Cockpit...3rd person cameras should only be used as a Spectator Sport not for Running and Gunning.  You want 3rd person cameras go play PS3 and Xbox.   If this is going to be a true Simulated 1st person shooter in the Chair...  we all need to fly in the Cockpit using radars and Instrumentation, not like little kids running around with MechGuns.  You want a better view choose a Mech with a bigger window.  lmao

Now using a Mech with the Nano Suit like in Crysis would be awesome, Cloke Engaged---"Maximum Shield"    all I hear thats related to Crysis is, "Energy Critical" then you dead.    it would be stupid to hear the Nano Suit say, "Third Person Camera Engaged"...  lmao

As for the Exploits we all know its being used, I see people using lag sites when in battle, when a person tries to engage them they lose FPS.  ex: Crystal stacks and Nukes.

[Defender]

Regarding 3rd person view?  Yes we have.

Regarding free-look?  We have as well, but someone usually mentions it and then it gets lost in the thread.

Personally, having my view "locked" straight ahead in the cockpit doesn't feel natural, and as crazy as this sounds, it actually makes your head itself feel stiff after playing for a long time.  Having the free-look like ones in Flight Simulator X, MW2 (MechWarrior 2, not COD!  Who else is pissed they hijacked our abbreviation?), and other intensive sim games, really makes you feel like an actual pilot in the cockpit.  Even more so with headtracking.  I own a pair of HMD's, and if there one day is support in a mech game for headtracking I'll probably go into uncontrollable fits of joy.  MWLL, you could be the first!

Plus it would be so much better if I can just look out the right side of the cockpit to scan ridges, and not have to continuously swing my torso back and forth like the damn AI mechs in MW2.

Lastly, you devs put so much work into the cockpit models, and every mech is different.  Half of my time using a free-look will likely be drooling as I look at all the shiny panels and buttons around me.

Freelook shares the same issues that TPV has. It fires wherever the camera is facing. So, wherever you're looking, you fire. This wouldn't be an issue if it didn't make torso-mounted weapons fire out at an angle (which makes absolutely no sense) and none of our models are modeled with free range of motion (ala, MW3 where you could look out the side view, the arm would turn, and fire with just that arm).

So, looking around and firing your weapons in whatever direction you're looking would be more of an exploit than just locking the cockpit view to the center the way it is because firing arm weapons and torso weapons from angles and directions you're not actually facing is more of an immersion breaker and exploit than our current setup.

[KingLeerUK]

I don't have an issue with having freelook inside of our cockpits.  So long as weapons can only fire to the centerline of the torso (as they currently do when you are locked into first person view) then this works.  The problem is that CryEngine2 doesn't have a clue what to do with freelook and it will make weapons fire in the direction of view, regardless of the surrounding geometry of the vehicle.  If I'm standing with my torso centered to my feet and enter 3rd person to look over my right shoulder, if I fire weapons in this mode the bullets/lasers/etc will be shot out to my right, inconsistent with the geometry of the 'Mech (or any remote relation to reality).  This is a BIG hurdle to overcome code-side and we have a ton of other features begging for attention first.
 
In addition to the above technical hurdle, having freelook in some of the 'Mech cockpits would be more than a tad anti-climatic.  Think about having freelook inside a Novacat or an Awesome.  There isn't a lot of "window" to begin with so you would be constrained to looking at the interior of the cockpit.  Despite claims of "want to see how cool the cockpit looks" I think the novelty will wear off pretty quickly, especially for any vehicles that have non-protruding cockpits.  This makes me (personally) question if the effort required will be justified by the outcome.
 
There is also the question of how freelook will be handled for non-'Mech vehicles.  For aeros, this could be implemented as a really useful "turning your head" mechanic to see to the sides and above.  For tanks, this gets a little weird because we have camera positions chosen based on optimal gameplay, not head-realistic driver position.  Some would say "put the the camera where the commander/gunner/driver is" but I think the existing position makes the best compromise for having 1 player in a vehicle.  Freelook might give a "side mirror" toggled view, and maybe even a quasi-top-down type view to allow for terrain navigation.
 
Regardless of how free look works, it should be a mode that, when toggled, disables your ability to fire weapons.  There should be a transition interval (0.5 sec) when switching.
 
To the last point, I would not mind having some preset cameras that relayed set external views to the cockpit of a 'Mech.  A "leg-centered ground cam" would be useful, as would a "reverse" cam looking straight out of the back of the 'Mech.  In my opinion, these views would be toggled through on a sub-monitor.  With the addition of a sub-monitor, we could introduce things like gun-camera, remote camera drones, shared camera for commander view, etc.
 
As far as a pure 3rd person experience...  hell no.  With all my heart and strength, no.

[Bowrrl]

A free retical that the arms follow would be amazing if torso mounted weaponry would still face forward. AT1 has it and I believe that it really makes the mechs feel a lot more immersive and true to Battletech as opposed to the walking bricks with guns of MW4. Would probably be insanely hard to implement though for not a whole lot of total gain, other than a bit more immersion.

[Defender]

A free retical that the arms follow would be amazing if torso mounted weaponry would still face forward. AT1 has it and I believe that it really makes the mechs feel a lot more immersive and true to Battletech as opposed to the walking bricks with guns of MW4. Would probably be insanely hard to implement though for not a whole lot of total gain, other than a bit more immersion.

As I noted above, it would be cool, but we don't model our mechs with that much range of motion in-mind. I model to avoid clipping geometry. Some games don't care about things like that. As a modeler, anything that will collide at some point should never clip through a mesh. Some of our mechs have clipping...but I didn't model those.

[Redvan]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSfG5CMJieE&feature=related

The section after 1:43 is particularly relevant. 



I strongly encourage the developers to stick with their initial decision on this matter and to remove third-person perspective before it becomes a staple.

this is why 3rd person should be bant from all FPS.

[(TLL)KitLightning]

I strongly encourage the developers to stick with their initial decision on this matter and to remove third-person perspective before it becomes a staple.

It will be removed with the next update...