Add IR marking laser for aircraft

[BaerMitUmlaut]

When merged this pull request will:

• Adds an IR marking laser for aircraft, controlled through the pilot camera
• Idea taken from (Ready) Adds more laser functionality to aircraft #7509 but completely rewritten
• IR laser is a 10km long light emitting object that is resized to the appropriate length, so it doesn't clip through objects or terrain
• Laser orientation updates are sent over the network once per second and interpolated clientside

TODO:

• Blocking issue: setVectorUp with attached objects is not instant, thus the laser doesnt actually touch the ground and is quite shaky when the plane is moving - maybe @dedmen can fix that in engine?
• Eden checkbox or something similar to manually equip vehicles with it instead of automatically enabling it for every plane with a pilot camera
• Feedback for the pilot that the laser is active (currently appears invisible because the camera is inside of the laser object, an offset could work but might block the view too much)
• Epilepsy friendly setting to disable laser flickering
• Maybe add support for 5km+ line intersection

Screenshot:

Reference image (the only one I could find, would love to see more if anybody finds some):

Source

Mainly publishing this as a POC for custom IR lasers, I think the concept is pretty neato.

[dedmen]

setVectorUp with attached objects is not instant

more details? I would expect delay by a few frames, and then a "instant" flop into position.

[Neviothr]

https://forums.bohemia.net/forums/topic/140837-development-branch-changelog/?page=58&tab=comments#comment-3438862

Added: irDotSize entry to weapon IR laser attachment config classes for the size of the IR dot on laser impact

Perhaps make the laser's dot bigger, to create more of an area marking laser, rather than a pinpoint one?

[BaerMitUmlaut]

Aircraft don't have weapon attachments...
We can make the laser as big as we want, since everything here is custom and not based on vanilla.

[dedmen]

Here is my script with the hopefully 2.08 scripted lasers feature
https://gist.github.com/dedmen/61643bd7b7205c13b68bff4b214f5840#file-weaponlaser-sqf-L136

Docs https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/drawLaser

[PabstMirror]

The 3den attribute is weird, it's default value is true.
So if you put a plane down, nothing will be set
if you open attributes it will show being checked, but not set anything

I had to set it to false, which added the attribute to the sqm
then change it back to true to get it to work

[PabstMirror]

UAV's hate having this thing attached, they kept going up in altitude to avoid it

I forget what I did but somehow I ended up with this "burning" spot left, but it eventaully went away after a few seconds

[veteran29]

UAV's hate having this thing attached, they kept going up in altitude to avoid it

Maybe we should wait for 2.08 and use drawLaser?

[BaerMitUmlaut]

UAV's hate having this thing attached, they kept going up in altitude to avoid it

How are you testing this? I tried it with the Yabhon drone and a loiter waypoint at 500 m altitude, which seems to work just fine. That was pretty much the use case I had in mind originally. We could switch to the scripted laser later, if that has the same capability (range would be my main concern), but I would prefer not delaying this PR further unless necessary. 2.06 is already taking quite a while, so I don't expect 2.08 to still arrive this year.

I've fixed the attribute by enabling the laser by default. The bright spot is odd, since that should be part of the model, which is clearly not visible. I'd assume this is caused by some sort of lazy update within the engine. If you can repro it, please let me know.

[dedmen]

I don't expect 2.08 to still arrive this year.

Thats indeed not planned. rather Q1 2022

[severgun]

Just a reminder that 2.08 already released.

[BrettMayson]

• Switched to drawLaser instead of an object
• Shows the laser in Zeus night vision

Because drawLaser fades over time, it is a little obvious where the command repeats to extend the range beyond what the engine supports for a single drawLaser call, but I personally think this is pretty minor.

[johnb432]

Got loads of

21:49:32 Error in expression <EqualTo [] } do {
        _intersects = lineIntersectsSurfaces [_startPos, _endP>
21:49:32   Error position: <lineIntersectsSurfaces [_startPos, _endP>
21:49:32   Error 0 elements provided, 3 expected
21:49:32 File /z/ace/addons/markinglaser/functions/fnc_renderPFH.sqf..., line 357
21:49:32 Error in expression <ivate _elevation = _modelVector#2 atan2 vectorMagnitude [_modelVector # 0, _mode>
21:49:32   Error position: <vectorMagnitude [_modelVector # 0, _mode>
21:49:32   Error Type Any, expected Number
21:49:32 File /z/ace/addons/markinglaser/functions/fnc_renderPFH.sqf..., line 339

being spammed after my plane crashed and I teleported myself out with Zeus (not sure if the teleportation had much of an effect tbh).

[PabstMirror]

Last time I tested this in mp there were big problems with laser position syncing
I might have some ideas how to redo, I'll try to look into this because it is a neat feature