shooting tin cans

[Dr Beeb]

or more precisely illicit cargo containers recently ejected. I like to shoot them up so I don't accidentally scoop up them up again. So I have probably discovered for myself something related to the collision code difficulties. If you aim for the center of the container it doesn't blow up. You have to aim nearish to a vertex of the container. I guess this applies to ships too.

Would it be possible to add a few additional vertices for such code checking, say middle of object, center of large panels etc ? Maybe not supplied by the models themselves but calculated internally by Oolite to add to the models' list? This could be quite difficult for very convex objects but most objects in Oolite are not that extreme.

[Eric Walch]

or more precisely illicit cargo containers recently ejected. I like to shoot them up so I don't accidentally scoop up them up again. So I have probably discovered for myself something related to the collision code difficulties. If you aim for the center of the container it doesn't blow up. You have to aim nearish to a vertex of the container. I guess this applies to ships too.

This all depends to the position of the laser, compared to the viewpoint. But the same is valid for real guns. When you calibrate the cross-hair for exact aiming a great distance, you also have to overshoot the target at close range to hit it.

[Kaks]

Yep, if you use a ship design with the laser centered on the crosshairs you don't get any parallax problems, and you hit exactly where you aim, at any distance. Though I must say the laser coloured + in the middle of the screen when you fire doesn't look too realistic to me...

A related problem is trying to dock manually using Charlie's falcon. The viewpoint is off to the side of the ship, so keeping the centre of the dock in the middle of the screen will always result in a crash! Ah the memories!

[Cmdr Wyvern]

A related problem is trying to dock manually using Charlie's falcon. The viewpoint is off to the side of the ship, so keeping the centre of the dock in the middle of the screen will always result in a crash! Ah the memories!

A bit like driving a car, where the driver's POV is off to the side. So 'drive' a Falcon like it's a really big, space-capable SUV.
The Falcon, 1st choice of spacehogs and zero-gee soccer moms.

[Dr Beeb]

yep, in Cobby Mk III aim high and you always hit it, my apologies to the code.