Merc -finished!!

[Spekkio]

They could both be on the gun. Most police forces use attachable flashlights/lasers on the guns, not on their heads. This is because the light or laser will always shine exactly where you are aiming. Furthermore, you can't use the flashlight and laser in conjunction in SvM, so there could be a singular device that switches between both on the gun.

[goodkebab]

hmm...

light attached to gun introduces the flashlight having wild movements when charging, jumping, beserk, or anything else that animates the gun outside the players cone of vision.


Not that I have a problem with that.  But having it on the left shoulder while sniping right handed is still plausable without a disorientating the flashlight.  This is because Merc will remain square to the gun for the sake of animations being quick and snappy between movement and sniping.  That is how its done in CT.

I took it off helmet purely for asthetics.

[Wanted_David]

David, could you give us a screenshot of haze's view?  If not I will just go and find one...

There you go. Hope it's any good. It's not a screenshot, but it's just as good (or even better).
http://trailers.gametrailers.com/gt_vault/t_haze_ubidays07a_h264.mov

[frvge]

I agree with goodkebab's style. We also need to have some original stuff :p And with his explanation, it's also possible.

[Gawain]

you need the light where you look/aim at, and not in the raw direction the torsoe is facing. it just makes no sense at all as the torsoe can't move as much as the head/eyes/weapon.

[Gui Brazil]

You know, it might not be as real as a flashlight on the gun or on his head, but I find it to be quite an interesting aproach to it. Beside, we should trust Kebab, he knows what he's doing. I bet it'll look damn cool.

[Overstatement]

you need the light where you look/aim at, and not in the raw direction the torsoe is facing. it just makes no sense at all as the torsoe can't move as much as the head/eyes/weapon.

Now that I think about it. This makes the most sense in relation to games. These days (last gen too), you move your mouse a little and your head is able to move without the body reorienting itself (body never moves if you look up). With most games, this would be fine but the direction and cone of light from the flashlight is pretty important because it needs to be exactly where the player is pointing. If the flashlight is on the body, the light will sometimes move but not the flashlight. If you put it on the gun, I'm not really sure how UT3 would handle that because some games have an relaxed gun holding pose if the weapon has not been fired in a while (and it might look unrealistic if the merc always points to where he is looking). So the safest placement would be the head.

[iservealot]

you need the light where you look/aim at, and not in the raw direction the torsoe is facing. it just makes no sense at all as the torsoe can't move as much as the head/eyes/weapon.

Now that I think about it. This makes the most sense in relation to games. These days (last gen too), you move your mouse a little and your head is able to move without the body reorienting itself (body never moves if you look up). With most games, this would be fine but the direction and cone of light from the flashlight is pretty important because it needs to be exactly where the player is pointing. If the flashlight is on the body, the light will sometimes move but not the flashlight. If you put it on the gun, I'm not really sure how UT3 would handle that because some games have an relaxed gun holding pose if the weapon has not been fired in a while (and it might look unrealistic if the merc always points to where he is looking). So the safest placement would be the head.

You always have these crazy assumptions about UT3. Gun, head, body whatever it doesn't matter. Though, the animations will need to keep this in mind. You will need to do animation blending for everything above the waist equally.

[Overstatement]

I'm also thinking about the animation so that it looks realistic. It has nothing to do with what I think Unreal3's limitations are.

If we have the light on the shoulder, we may have to force the body to always face where the player is looking at rather than just moving the head to look around. This only applies to when the person is standing still but apparently a big enough issue that moving only the head is a widely implemented system. And we still have to deal with what happens when the player looks up (because you only move your head when you look up). Does the cone of light move while the flashlight on his shoulder does not?

Put it on the gun and it may look unrealistic that the merc will point his gun at every little thing.

[Daybreak]

So i didn't get to see the pics yet. LOL. but sounds like there's a discussion on the flash light location. Sounds like it's no longer on the head, which is fine. Why not have it like on the shoulder as someone suggested, and just have it move to where you look. Kinda like the Predator.
Judging by the awesomeness of the UT engine, the spies could shoot the lights off the shoulders. Then again, maybe not. It'd just be cool to do.

[B1nArY_001]

I think most everyone here has seen predator. His shoulder mounted energy weapon's servos were tied into his hud and appeared to use an eye tracking type device to aim it. Any reason it could not be placed on the left shoulder with something like this? Wouldn't even really need to rotate the light to track with the beam if a fish-eye type lense or the right design were used. the orientation of the light it self would be almost unnoticed and no one is lookling there, they are watching the beam.

[Daybreak]

Plus it'd be cool to see a merc just stop and without moving too much, and have his flashlight just be looking around. Just like in Predator it'd create a tense moment.

As long as it looked cool, i'd be down.

[Spekkio]

Overstatement brings up a good point: if the merc looks up or down, he's mostly going to just be moving his head and his gun to re-orient his aim. So you either have to implement something from the predator, which still might look silly, or move the light to the gun or head.

[frvge]

If we have a fully automatic 'link' between the Merc and the flashlight on the shoulder.
I dunno, eye-movement recognition and feed that info to some electrical motors in the flashligh-holder...

That way we can keep the original idea of the shoulder-mounted flashlight and have an explanation for the up/down/left/right looking. Maybe add 2 flashlights, one on either side, because the neck could be blocking one if you look too much to the side (although the torso would probably spin too)

[Gawain]

ffs flashlight belongs to the head, everything else looks stupid/makes no sense.