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Are realistic ballistics possible with this engine?

by John V. Heilker · in Torque Game Engine · 10/30/2001 (6:54 pm) · 5 replies

True, shooters have been done again and again and that is after all what this engine was made for. But none of them not even Counter Strike or rainbow 6 has been very realistic. Is it now possible to calculate ricochets of large numbers of projectiles? This is one of my greatest complaints.....but I can understand why such physiques would be daunting. However especially in the age of automatic weapons this is of the utmost importance to convey the largest danger in a firefight with machine guns etc. Currently a single accurate shot weapon like the weapons of world war 1 or 2 is more deadly then say a m249 SAW spewing lead down an alley, why? Because any bullet that hits any surface immediately halts, as opposed to realistically skimming walls and pavement. Also, does this engine allow for more realistic damage of objects? I was excited by the first steps of this in Red faction...but really it has just made Dig Dug with rocket launchers. Is it possible with this engine to shoot realistic holes in walls etc or at least convey say a more realistic effect of ballistics that penetrate different kinds of objects? For instance if we can not in real time change the objects to show damage, can the engine at least give different objects different resistance levels based on material and thickness? Thanks I would be very interested to hear about this, and what the Torque engine is capable of, as well as any news of future enhancements in this regard.
-Sigismundo.
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Torque Owner Gary G. Herbst - Second Account
#1
11/07/2001 (2:40 pm)
Realistic ballistics are possible either coded or using a physics engine such as Velocity-RPE which will be released soon and incorporate numerous interfaces and tutorials. It's possible that GG might work out an agreement with us to bundle the Velocity-RPE engine. Otherwise the Velocity-RPE (Real-Time Physics Engine) will be available at a greatly reduced cost to indie developers. Substantially lower then current commercial offerings.

GH-

Torque Owner Jarrod Roberson
#2
05/10/2002 (11:13 pm)
I coded bullet penetration for my SoF mod by checking the texture of a poly and reducing the damage and range based on the "type" of "surface". Then traced to the next poly and calculated the distance and applied this damage reduction as a power, so you got multiple surface penetration with reduced damage, even did random richocetts based on the angle that the "bullets" struck the surface. Based on the angle some rounds penetrated, some bounced and some died.

since I have yet to buy TGE I can't speak to "how" to do it in TGE, I don't know what is possible but from what I have seen it seems that it should be possible.

Operation Flash Point does realistic bullet physics over distance, but since it is almost entierly outdoors combat they do not fool with penetration code.

It is awesome to snipe with the Draganov at 1500 meters and have to use the range finder in the scope and have it WORK!

Torque Owner Harold "LabRat" Brown
#3
05/11/2002 (1:23 am)
Projectiles in torque exist as a physical object. This is different then most games I've heard discussed where the projectile was a line traced from the eye or muzzlepoint to the target.

With that said the current projectiles are ballistic, IE they are affected by gravity and will suffer from ballistic drop. They also have some code for elasticity and bounce for projectiles that are not "armed" right away. Which I'm sure if you wished you could co-opt for the ricochet with access to the source code.

Torque Owner Edward Smith
Silencersoft
#4
05/11/2002 (3:41 am)
umm... yeah it would be interesting to use that but...it would be hard to get the bullets "realistic"...I can see people using the bullets "realistic" abilitys to shoot around corners with it...but that may be easy to over come by making a random thingy which makes some just stay where they are basicly and others fly off...and you have to change the damage after hitting the wall... because some lead and force behind it is lowered. Then if you want realistic bullets you need to make them tumable though bodys and come out etc, and the lower size bullet is the easyerit tumables eg. the 5.56x45mm(.223) ...and bullets tumable from just leaves sometimes... but I bet people would get pissed off and say its crap etc... because they don't know whats real and whats not...the world is full of idiots... filled with ideas of weapons which aren't true etc... Like if you wanted to be realistic you wouldn't fill the magazine of a rifle with what it says because the first or first few can get jamed very easy, eg. the M-16(A#) have a 30 round magazine (20 also) and the magazine isn't made to well so really its meant to be best to put about 27 rounds in it... a very few weapons are good with the amount of rounds it says...thou I have noticed that pistol magaiznes are kind of better... maybe the size of round difference. But if you put 27 rounds in your "30 round M-16 magazine" people will go...wtf... so what do you do? go realistic all the way or stop at a point? and what is that point?

Well thats all got to say...

(I can't spell to good...sorry)

Torque Owner Jarrod Roberson
#5
05/12/2002 (7:26 am)
I just got the Torque code an started digging thru it, so if I am wrong correct me. But this is the very first thing I started messing with.

Every weapon in Torque has a "projectile" that is represented by an object in the game. Every "bullet" has the capability to be "ballistic" with distrance and drop off.

There are no "hitscan" weapons in Torque that I can find.

Anyway, I definately want to have rapid fire weapons with "realistic" impact model, it will probably be a fake impact model that appears to be realistic. But I set the rifle and crossbow to fire extremely fast and the engine complied quite nicely.

I am just wondering what it will do with 32 people firing machine guns at a time? :-)

Anyone know what lots of rapid fire long range weapons will do to Torque?