Baldo's Folly
I never really had strong feelings about the 1.25x magnification that DFBHD(TS) has for sighted weapons. Or is it 1.34x? Well, it tightens the default horizontal FOV from 80° to 64°, but I may have made screenshots at some point, counted pixels, and found that everything gets 1.34x bigger.
But enjoying the 2x (2.3x) mag. I put on most sighted weapons in the DFWIQ and SFOD mods I experiment in, I'm now of the opinion that 1.25x (1.34x?) is not really enough for the effort it must've taken to put it in the game.
Maybe. The default HFOV in Comanche 4 is 64°, and DFBHD is built on C4, so maybe the FOV expansion to 80° was the necessary effort. * shrugs *
Attached to and inserted above in this post is a screenshot I made in the version of the TIOCoop92 mod I've edited for my single player enjoyment, including a rework of the optic on the AUG in the mod, and today, I added a correctly scaled and accurized adaptation of the EOTech XR308 reticle.
Okay, I've never confirmed that the cross on the reticle is 20 mrads (68.75 moa) wide with a 10 mrad (34.38 moa) gap, but that's what makes sense to me. The reticle center is zeroed at 300m 100m (see edit below), and the three dots beneath that are as close to the 600m, 900m, and 1200m POIs as I could get them at the resolutions I'm dealing with. You may notice a dot to the left and two dots to the right of the drops. Those represent the '.6', '.9', and '1.2' labels that are not legibly reproducable at 1.25x (1.34x?) zoom at any supported resolution in DFBHD(TS).
Under laboratory conditions (0 error, 0 recoil), I hit the tall practice target with consistent headshots at 300m, easy center mass hits at 600m and 900m, and I can't really see the target at 1200m at 1.25x (1.34x?), but I can through the 4x (4.77x) binoculars, and after setting the 1200m POA where I kind of think I saw the target through the peepers, I take the shot, switch back to binos, and watch it explode. Groovy.
But...
I tried something again today. The ammo.def has a drag value in every entry. That value is always 1, far as I know, but I changed it for the AUG in the TIOCoop mod. The original mod gives the AUG 7.62mm NATO, at some ridiculous velocity that's murderously fun in MP, but challengingly unfun from the AI in SP. And WikiPedia says the AUG is not chambered in 7.62mm.
WikiPedia does say the AUG is chambered in .300 Blackout, though.
Gathering further values from WikiPedia, I edited the ammo velocity to 680m per second, as one form .300BK has, and centering the AUG's boresight on the top edge of a target 440m away, I tediously trial and errored tweaks to the drag to get the POI about 100 inches (2.5m) below the POA.
Later realized the test rifle producing the WikiPedia values was likely zeroed to 100m, maybe 200m, not aimed to boresight, so I overdragged the ammo, but the point became moot.
After locking the drag to 0.989, I edited the POAs in the targa to match the POIs, got a shockingly low POA for 900m, and realized the bullets were slowing too much and falling to the ground at 1000m to 1100m, regardless of how high I aimed.
I thought, "That can't be right." It wasn't.
I fooled around and came up with drag 0.995, arbitrarily, edited the targa to fit that, and that's what's in the screenshot.
You may see why I chose the XR308 reticle. The targa has two empty pixels between the 300m and 600m POAs. If I attempted a correctly for 1.25x (1.34x?) scaled ACOG, I'd have to fit the 400m and 500m POAs in those two pixels. The XR308, with its 300m drops, makes 1.25x (1.34x?) fit a bit more comfortably.
I'm a Gen-X metalhead. I'm not like other guys. I'm nervous and my socks are too loose.
This reticle is tight as possible, loose as necessary, and I like it.
But messing around with drag in DFBHD(TS) is a slog. The margins are too tight to be called margins. Anyone with a little shop experience would feel 'tolerances' would be a better fit.
Literally thousandths.
Edit: As for cross-posting with the NovaHQ, well, they have a system in place where post/reply edits are disallowed after a grace period. Scott actually increased that from (I think) three days to two weeks, not necessarily for my benefit, but it was my incompetence at proofreading that inspired the change.
Corrections like this one of those reasons why.
I changed the XR308 reticle on the AUG to zero at 100m instead of 300m. I only thought to zero it at 300m 'cause the drops are for 600m, 900m, and 1200m, so 300m would fit that pattern, but today I realized it just makes headshots under 300m tricky. And editing the reticle to zero at 100m puts two more pixels between the main POA and the 600m drop.
I'll update the screenshot here soon, but at NovaHQ, the post there is what we're stuck with.
Uploaded files:
Hi Baldo,
A deeper dive than most people have ever gone. Nice work as always.
I have some work for you. I need you to make some new Weapon Skins, Sights and Crosshairs.
If you want to take on this job, I will contact you at the end of November.
Sent you a PM.
This is the construction I use in my target range map:
A 20x20cm steam grate item on the 'face' of all the tall silhouette targets, with events connected to each that wins goals and advances the waypoint.
Hopefully, that makes this screenshot more understandable:
You see the ammo counter. It took me six rounds with velocity 340, drag 0.993, weapon error_up of 0.017 (2 moa groups) to hit that 2.29 moa wide grate from 300m.
'Cause what I'm calling the 'dropring' targa is not really a Trijicon RTR .223 or an RTR 9mm PCC reticle, but it's heavily inspired by them, adapted pretty friggin' well for the job, and makes the M4A1SD in the TIOCoop mod a joy to master.
The horseshoe and red dot are zeroed to 50m, and the hashes on the vertical are POAs for 100m, 200m, and 300m. The POIs are all within the POA pixels they need to be in, and I can work with this reticle, even at 1.25x (1.34x?). The horseshoe's inner diameter is dude-wide at 50m, and I initially had the hashes dude-wide at range, but the 300m hash got too faint to be useful, so I made them all 3px wide.
It's a knock-off, but effective.
Edit: This will require explanation.
I had drawn a for 1.25x (1.34x?) correctly scaled RCO M4/M150 reticle. The infamous ACOG. Using the info Trijicon so helpfully offers for download, I converted the reticle dimensions into not very useful pixel counts, drew the reticle, confirmed that the 800m hash is more or less 9px below the tip of the chevron, which is more or less zeroed at 100m by mounting the reticle 1px below center.
Then the evil imp that steers the Roomba that is my dust-collecting brain whispers, set the SG-553's ammo velocity to the standard military issue M4A1's muzzle velocity of 910m/s, and adjust the drag to a more authentic value. I could not resist.
Keep in mind, the 800m hash on a correctly scaled for 1.25x (1.34x?) ACOG reticle is not even an entire pixel wide. But I loaded the range map, set up the 800m target (my edited version of the TIO target 3, see below), and by trial and error, with error_up and recoil edited to 0, tweaked the drag 'til rounds were landing on that little target when I held the end of vertical on it. Ended up with a drag value of 0.9905, actually.
I then applied this confirmed drag value on all the ammo.def entries that I tweaked the drag on, necessitating many edits on various BDC reticles I'd done so far, including the not-RTR reticle on the M4A1SD. The great thing about the new drag value is that it slows the rounds down a bit more than what I was working with before when I decided to zero the red dot at 50m and set the remaining drops to 100m, 200m, 300m and 400m. I decided to dispense with the 50m red dot, move it to 100m, and now you see the new screenshot.
So to summarize: Ammo velocity 910, drag 0.9905, results in rounds hitting half meter wide targets 800m away 10px below boresight, 9px below the 100m zero, which is about as close to 37.5 moa below that 100m zero as you can get at this scale and resolution. I think.
Also note: On my system, at resolution 1024×768, with 'Object Detail' on 'High,' the game won't even render the TIO targets beyond 400m. I edited the map with fence posts sticking out of the terrain a little bit, about 90-some-odd meters out, and nudged them left and right 'til they centered on the TIO targets at distance. I guess I should disclaim the accuracy of my drag value with this information, hm?
Uploaded files:
This was my timesink today:
I've been doing all this fooling around with the tall silhouettes, and the TIOCoop mod's got these neat training targets. I was disappointed about the lack of an IPSC cardboard target, or a target image that wasn't distorted, so I reskinned target 3. The fun thing about this project I set on myself today is that the cardboard target you see in the screenshot above is actually 46x76cm in game. Took me several iterations to first figure out how to confirm the correct scale, then to tweak the colors 'til it looks more or less right.
I don't hate the results.
Edit: This screenshot includes five shots from 25m. Shows off the bullet hole decals I made for all the mods I tweak.
Edit: I was paying about 11.6% more attention on the range today and I saw that the new skin on the target would shift to the right at a certain distance. Today, I suffered the joys of mipmap tweaking!
I've got the new skin sitting rock steady now. All this modding is a slog, but an educational slog, no mistake.
Uploaded files:This one's a quadruple:
See, when you like making reticles for DBHFD(TS) and other NovaLogic games and mods, like I do, you put a bit of effort into the work. It's tricky with DFBHD(TS) mods 'cause you get 1.25x (1.34x?) magnification for custom reticles, and that's it. I'm not saying I can't do up an ACOG that small, I'm saying I can't do up a usable ACOG that small.
But I had the idea you see above. A 50 mrad cross with a 20 mrad open middle, nice center dot, and illuminated to perfection in red. Mounted 1 pixel below screen center to at least try to be zeroed at 100m, but I think it's more like 200m. The scope targa looks just like the one on the M4A1SD because it is, and after noticing the illuminated cross was almost the same size and shape as the coma20mm.tga crosshair for unzoomed weapons, I mathed up the distance from my spawn point on this map I'd need to insert the 2.5m wooden barbed wire fence end posts so that they'd be 15 mrads long, recreated the illuminated reticle out there.
Good thing too, 'cause first I noticed I made the reticle too short, and after fixing that, I saw the space in the middle was too tall, no, I never have been diagnosed with ADHD, since you ask.
The mod says this weapon is the SG-552, but I did some Wikipedia for an ammo velocity, and saw that, yes, the SG-552 and the SG-553 both have 9-inch barrels, but the SG-552 does not have a Picatinny rail, and the TIOCoop mod's Sig viewmodel does.
Now for breakfast.
Uploaded files:One of the posts above's been edited to talk about the drag tweaks I've done recently. Basically, I established a more correct drag value for some ammo.def entries, and it's made some of my BDC reticles uselessly inaccurate, and impossible to correct aesthetically.
Shall I explain?
The SG-553 would look good with an ACOG, but a 9" barrel means a 725m/s muzzle velocity, limited range, and 1.25x (1.34x?) magnification, all making an ACOG reticle less than viable.
I put an Elcan C79 reticle on it. It's pretty much of authentic scale, and zeroed as close to 300m as I could get it, which is about 3px below boresight.
The XR308 I had on the AUG could not be edited to .300 Blackout's 680m/s at 0.9905 drag. The .9 km drop was so far below, and the rounds won't even reach 1.2 km. I reverted the AUG back to the Swarovski 'donut of death,' but with a bit of illumination that I invented.
The inner ring diameter is 5px, which is about 1.8m (5' 11") at 300m (328 yds), and the outer ring diameter is 11px so that the illuminated bits could have a nice black border.
The ring is mounted 3px below boresight, allowing a fairly accurate 300m zero, as best as my testing could tell.
Screenshots!
