3D Radar UI : Beta-2d July-22-2016

I've been trying to implement your system, and while I've been successful at getting the radar to show up, it is not drawing any actors. I'm sure I will figure this out eventually, but the really big issue I'm having is that the scripts grind my framerates down from 200fps to 20fps, any idea how to fix that or is it a typical GUI issue?

 

Looks great. Reminds me of the good old "Elite" days

 

Wow, looks great! Thank you sooooooo much, this will help out a lot!

 

@ScienceFictionado: when you say not drawing actirs do you mean the GUI icons for the radar or the HUD elements? How many objects do you have running the scripts?

 

ForceX, I meant that it is not drawing the enemies icons. I have about 10 enemies with the script.

 

@ScienceFictionado: First check that a texture is applied to your targets Radar ID Icon texture field. Second check that your layers are setup correctly. For layers check the manual and the example scene provided. Let me know, we'll get this worked out.

 

thanks, will do today.

 

just updated to the latest version, getting null reference exceptions at lines 50 and 213 in the RID script. I believe I have everything set up correctly.

EDIT: 213 expands into this:

 

Also getting this in the demo scene

 

@ScienceFictionado : My fault i some how didn't get all the folders for the project file. 1.2.1a has been uploaded and should fix this problem. Re download again and give it a try.

 

Update 1.2.2

Changes
1. Target list is no longer updated every frame. Instead it is only updated when selecting targets.

Fixes:
1. Fixed the archived project files.

 

1.2.2 has the same errors

Edit: I tried both importing the package, and opening the project files.

 

To try it out i just downloaded the package from the link and it worked just fine.

Do this.

1. Download the file.
2. Extract
3. Open Project --> Open Other --> ( FX_3D_RadarVb1.2.2 \ FX_3D_RadarVb1.2.2 \ Project Files \ ForceX 3D Radar )

 

Getting same errors.

 

Update 1.2.3

Changes
1. FX_3DRadar_ID sets "Is Player" status automatically on Awake by checking if the current object has FX_3DRadar_Master.js attached. If not the tag will be changed to "Active"

Fixes:
1. Clicking an object will now select it as a target instead of generating a Null reference error.


@ScienceFictionado: I've made some changes in this version based on what i think your errors are point at.

Does one of your objects with FX_3DRadar_ID.js have "Is Player" set true, but does not have the FX_3DRadar_Master.js? This may have also been an issue if multiple objects in your scene had a "Player" tag.

Did you get this error when attempting to select a target with the mouse?

 

I did have some child objects of my Player object tagged Player. Everything is working now.

 

@ScienceFictionado: Fantastic

GUI Textures do take a performance hit. On my pc (Core i7 920) i can run 97 targets at 320 fps in the profiler but that's down from 2000 fps with no targets. I did a test with the same 97 targets where i disabled all GUITextures and keep the distance calculations running and saw all most no impact. fps stayed around 2000 fps in the profiler. This is something i will attempt to squeeze some more performance out of by looking at other methods other than GUITextures.

 

HUD targets are very shakey. I'm not using a reset world center trick, so I'm guessing thats why.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/20454603/flicker.flv

You might look at the way i draw targets in this script:

Code (csharp):

1.  if (target != null)
2.     {
3.         guiTexture.enabled = true;
4.         var relation = target.GetComponent(Relation);
5.         guiTexture.color = relation.color;
6.         var relativePosition = camTransform.InverseTransformPoint(target.position  );
7.         relativePosition.z = Mathf.Max(relativePosition.z, 1.0);
8.         thisTransform.position = cam.WorldToViewportPoint(camTransform.TransformPoi  nt(relativePosition + offset));
9.         thisTransform.position = Vector3(Mathf.Clamp(thisTransform.position.x, clampBorderSize, 1.0-clampBorderSize),
10.                                          Mathf.Clamp(thisTransform.position.y, clampBorderSize, 1.0-clampBorderSize),
11.                                          thisTransform.position.z);
12.     }
13.     else
14.     {
15.         guiTexture.enabled = false;
16.     }

 

Yes, if the targets are very far away then you may encounter floating point errors as it's based on the targets world position. How far out from 0,0,0 is your target in unity units? I saw in the video it was about 2300 from the player.

In you project your player craft is free to move away from 0,0,0? If so how do you prevent your player object from shaking the further away you get? I've seen in some of your videos that you fly a good distance.

I noticed during your video, your targets are not in the correct place inside the radar object.

 

My targets in that video are very very far away. I do get shaking, but I was able to minimize it to a tolerable level by shrinking the scale of everything to microscopic proportions, and I haven't placed anything to far out. The trade off is that shadows don't work because things are so small.

 

Ahh ok. Unfortunately this is one of those things that we just have too try to work around. My first method of placing everything inside of an World object seamed like a good idea at first. Just move the World object in the opposite direction of the player. But then the objects inside of the World object start to have localPosition floating point errors even if they get close to world 0,0,0. So now i've moved on to storing an array of parent objects moving them in the opposite direction of the player. Keeping everything in world space. Then every time an object is created it gets added to the array. Then when one gets destroyed just remove it from the array. Though i'm curious how well this will work when there are lots of things shooting. add add add add, remove remove remove. Only time will tell i suppose.

 

Quick tip. You can reduce the GUITexture over head by 1/2 simply by removing the texture for "Radar Target ID Base Icon Texture" located in FX_3DRadar_Master --> Radar / HUD Display Settings.

This will prevent the GUITexture from being generated. All it is, is a texture that's drawn at the bottom of the radar contact in the radar display. It's purely cosmetic.

 

Thanks so much for posting up your radar ForceX.

I am new to Unity (I've only been working with it for a little over a week) and was at the stage where I wanted to look into putting a 3D scanner into my game. An hour ago I was reading the Unity manual about how GUI's work and was somewhat disappointed. After a little searching I came across this thread and what appears to be something very close to what I had in mind.

I haven't even tried it yet, but I signed up just to make this reply and say thanks. Hopefully I will find time to take a look at it over the weekend and report back with my findings. Whatever happens I'm sure it is going to save me so much work and I will learn a great deal about custom HUD/GUI systems along with a host of other things.

Once again, thanks so much for posting this up for free. Hopefully I will be able to share some of my stuff in return as my project grows.

Edit: I couldn't resist and squeezed in a bit of time immediately to take a look at this. I ran through your manual and set up a test scene as directed. Wow, stella work. This is exactly what I was looking for and I love that you have made it so configurable. I can imagine that it will be fairly simple to add it to my own game.

I have already learned a great deal simply by seeing how to setup a HUD/GUI like this in Unity, and I'm sure I will learn so much more from digging through your scripts.

I can't thank you enough for releasing this to the community. I will report back once I've had more experience using it.

 

@V4nKw15h: First, welcome to the Unity community. This is a fantastic place with lots of great people. I'm really glad you like the radar system and that you are able to learn something new from it. If you require any help setting it up please feel free to PM me or post your question here in the thread. I'll help the best i can. Good luck with your project, and again welcome to Unity.

 

I've had a much deeper look at it today. I spent a couple of hours browsing through all the code to see how it all worked and I'm very happy. I've learned many techniques while doing it.

If I have one comment that would help myself and others it would be to have some comments in the script to detail what some of the things refer to, such as: TSB_HUD, TSB_ID_HUD. Most of the time I could work it out for myself based on surrounding code, but a few things like the ones I've mentioned would require some trial and error to identify which HUD item they control.

I will not implement your radar immediately into my game, because there are other things I want to work on first, but I can put a big check mark next to 3D Radar and GUI being solved. All the functionality I needed and more is there. I can't imagine the ammount of time you have saved me.

I've bookmarked this thread to keep an eye on developments and to give further feedback when the time comes to implement it into my game but I forsee no problems there at all. This will probably happen in a few weeks because I first want to get my enemy AI solved. The radar is not so important until I've done that.

Thanks again for all of your work and most importantly sharing it. I hope I will be able to return the favour at a later date.

 

@V4nKw15h: I'll add in some comments to the code and add in some more information about whats going on in the next update. Thanks for your feedback.

 

Hello again ForceX,

My game finally had some enemies flying around so I decided it was time to implement your radar. I had it imported and working in about ten minutes, and tweaked to suit my needs soon after. I ran into no problems with the setup but that is probably because I'd spent time playing around and getting used to it a last week.

Some feedback:
1. On page 4 of your manual you mention setting a Game Scale option. I couldn't set this without going into debug mode to access its value. Without doing this the distance indicator always reads 0 as it is being multiplied by the zero value in GameScale.
2. The HUD target selection indicator jumps off the target and to the edge of the screen when I get close to them. I have been trying to solve why this is happening and the behaviour seems quite random. Beyond 30 metres it works. Sometimes it stays on the target when they are close but usually it jumps to the edge of the screen while the target is still visible.

I just wanted to let you know that importing your radar went smoothly and to give you some feedback.

Thanks yet again for saving me so much time and offering this out to the community.


Edit: I solved the problem with the selected target HUD indicator jumping off the target to the edge of the screen.
Line 619 of FX_3D_RadarMaster.js
var StartZ = PlayerCameraT.position + PlayerCameraT.forward * 1;
I needed to change it to
var StartZ = PlayerCameraT.position + PlayerCameraT.forward * - 0.37;

My player cam is translated +0.37 on the Z axis compared to the center of my ship. It sits where the cockpit of my ship is and is a firstperson view. I assume that your camera must be a little behind the centre of your playership or that your ship is bigger than mine so you never ran into this issue? Either way it works for now and is hopefully useful feedback.

Edit 2: Actually that only stopped the HUD marker from jumping to the edge of the screen while I could still see the ship, but creates a new problem when the targetted ship is behind me. Now if the ship is behind me the HUD marker moves into the center of my screen instead of staying at the edge. I can't seem to work out how to solve this one. Hopefully you can help.

 

I can't confirm ATM but check your cameras near clip make sure it's set to something like .03 or something low. The script works by creating a view festrum (I know that's spelled wrong) mesh. Then a ray is cast from the cameras center to the target. If the camera hits the target then the HUD tsb will be drawn at the targets position. If the target goes off screen then the ray will hit the view festrum mesh then the returned position will be where the off screen indicator will be placed . So the near and far clip will play a part in setting up the view festrum mesh. If you get strange target popping start with that. Keep in mind that any changes made to the cameras fov or clip after run time will not change the current view festrum mesh. Have your camera setup the way you want it prior to running.

An example would be.
If your near clip is to far out in front then the ray may be able to cast its self around the view festrum as the target gets closer to the side of the player. Do there is a balance to be found.

I don't remember if or what I did with game scale, but it's purpose is to display a targets distance to be in your games distance instead of unity distance.

 

This is eerie... I have been developing a 3D radar just like this recently, that is almost exactly the same, except in C#. Even down to the targeting of subcomponents and the rendering method. Mind blown.

But, even though I hate to admit it, yours is even better *shakes fist*. If only I had found this sooner!
This is an incredibly robust package, I'm taken aback that you are releasing it for free it is that good. Especially with you using it for your own active project.

I'm not sure I'm going to use your version exactly as I hate ripping other people's code wholesale, but dammit this is nice so I might do it. Even if I don't it's been a very helpful aid and will be invaluable to my project. So much so that I finally bothered to register to say, thanks.

 

LOL glad you find it useful and welcome to the Unity forums. I'm currently exploring alternative methods of rendering all the HUD gfx that will not be using GUITextures. This will be a little ways out as I find time to work on it. Xmas and all.

 

The problems I described in my last reply were solved very easily but for the life of me I can't understand why the problem even existed. Allow me to explain.

I tried everything to fix it, from building a new project with your radar (worked perfectly so I knew the radar script was fine), to replacing my player ship with a default object and no personal scripts (problem persisted), to tweaking code (problem persisted), to removing your radar completely and restarting from the beginning (problem persisted).

Eventually I lucked onto the solution. For some bizarre reason if my player ship starts the game at (0,0,0) transform and rotation, I get the weird inaccuracies on the HUD system (not on the radar). But if I move my player ship to start away from world zero and with some rotation your radar worked perfectly. This seems so strange because all my tests on your radar had my player object starting at world zero without rotation and they all worked fine even when I went back to try and recreate my problem.

Weirder still, even if I replace my playership with an empty object, with nothing but your radar scripts, in my project the problem persists.

So the reason it is happening in my game is very weird, but it's not a problem anymore because I can easily start my ship away from World zero to eliminate it. I thought I should mention it though because others may run into the same issue.

Other than that weird, but easily solveable, glitch everything works perfectly and I love your radar. Thanks again ForceX.

 

Hello again. My project is coming along nicely now and I felt I should report another bug I came across.

I extended my game area and moved the starting position of my player ship to something like (450, 300,-980) to test the new area. Suddenly your HUD system wouldn't activate when I wanted to select targets. The radar worked fine.

I tracked the problem down to line 375 of the Radar Master script:

if((PlayerPos - t.transform.position).sqrMagnitude < RadarDistanceSQR){ .................................

It turned out that PlayerPos was constantly reading (0,0,0) so consequently your script always thought the enemies were too far away to add them to the target list.

I changed that line to:

if((ThisTransform.position - t.transform.position).sqrMagnitude < RadarDistanceSQR){........................

and everything worked fine again. PlayerPos is obviously not being updated correctly under my circumstances. You will probably understand why more easily than me because obviously I'm not as familiar with the flow of your script as you are.

Hope this helps you to track down a bug and Happy New Year

 

@V4nKw15h : Good find. As it turned out PlayerPos was being cached under the condition that a target was selected.. Which just happened to work out just fine at 0,0,0 (where i did all my testing) as you pointed out. This has now been fixed. A update will be posted in a few moments.

Thanks

 

Update 1.2.4

Fixes:
1. PlayerPos is now cached correctly.

Changes:
1. Project scale has been added to the inspector (again ).

 

Unity 3.5 has changed the way that GeometryUtility.CalculateFrustumPlanes generates it's planes.. This is causing issues with the off screen indicator when the target goes behind the player.

I've uploaded a Unity3.5 version that should correct this issue. I do not know if this version will work correctly in Unity3.4. This fix changes where the Frustum Planes are placed and how they are rotated.

This version is named U3.5_FX_3D_Radar

 

Hi again ForceX, I'm back with maybe another bug.

So, I have my Radar Range set at 1000, but it only displays enemies on the radar up to 500. It will put enemies into the 'Active' transform list up to 1000 though. So I find I can target enemies out of radar range upto 1000m. Although their HUD target icon doesn't show up unless they are within 500m, the icon on the radar for the selected target does appear outside of the radar up to 1000.

BTW I've altered the Radars Transform Scales to 500,500,500. I don't think this could be causing the problem but I'm mentioning it anyway to be safe. Setting it to 1000,1000,1000 makes no difference, nor does changing it to anything really. What difference does changing this scale make to anything?

So, I started trying to solve this problem. After an hour of head scratching I changed this line:

RadarRadiusRange = (RadarScale); to RadarRadiusRange = (RadarScale/2);

It's at about line 370ish in your MasterRadarScript. It's hard to know exactly because I have made additions to your code to meet my own needs in places but only minor things to tell my other scripts the targets distance or to disable the TLI when my ammo is out of range.

My hunch is your code is confusing radar 'diameter' with 'radius' in some calculations because changing the above line fixed my issues. Now only enemies visually within the radar get put into the enemy array and show up as targets. It all seems bug free with that change other than the fact that I'm still setting the Radar Range in the inspector to 1000, when in reality everything is working at 500 (which is what I really want).

Without this tweak, I can target enemies up to the full Radar Range (1000) but their HUD icon doesn't display and they appear outside of the radar on the screen. Basically parts of your system work at 1000. and other parts at only 500m.

Conclusion: My own tweak to your code fixes all my issues but I'm having to set RadarRange to 1000 when in reality it's working at 500. No big deal but I'm sure you will want to resolve the issue to your own satisfaction.
-----------------------------

Oh, and another thing, the line renderer lines for each target on the radar have started to flash on and off for me. I don't know for sure when this started happening and it's not something I've looked into solving either. They can dissapear for up to a second, flash on and off a few times and disappear again. I'll get back to you about it when I eventually decide that it's high enough priority to solve.
-----------------------------

Another point worth mentioning is that you are updating to work with the 3.5 beta. I'm avoiding using the beta for now because I don't want to run into beta headaches. I want to wait until most of the current issues are resolved if any. So I'm still running the version of your script prior to update 1.2.4. I'm letting you know because I'm unable to test anything other than that version for now.

It is quite possible that I will never upgrade from the version of the script I'm already using, because other than the alterations you mentioned to FrustrumPlanes calculations (which I will update myself) I am solving each issue as it comes along anyway.

I'm letting you know the bugs I find just as a way of saying thanks for releasing this to the community.

 

@V4nKw15h : "Radar Range" is the diameter or total coverage area of your radar (perhaps i should rename it). Since you are located in the center of this radius, you will only be able to select targets at half that range. So you have an effective coverage of "Radar Range". If you want to be able to select targets out to 1000 then just set your "Range Range" to 2000. That will give you a range of 1000 leading out to your front and 1000 out to your back. "Radar Range" also scales the radar object, so i would avoid changing the size of your radar object by hand. It's mesh size should be modeled at 1,1,1 unity units.

The line renderer's are setup the same way as the radar target list is. If you changed the way that "Radar Range" is calculated then the Line Renderers may no longer display correctly as the distances are now different, and could cause them to turn off while still inside the range of the radar.

Thanks for your feedback

 

Ah, okay. Yes it was confusing to see a Radar Range setting of 1000 when the radar display itself only handles objects up to half that distance. No wonder I was confused. It also proved confusing during gameplay to be able to cycle through targets that couldn't appear on the HUD. But nevermind, I have solved that issue to suit my own game and needs anyway.

I know I come back with some bug reports but nobody should be deterred from downloading and using this great piece of work. For those lurkers who are considering it, it works great in it's vanilla state. I'm running into issues only because I'm tweaking and altering things to suit my needs, which is to be expected really.

Thanks for your patience ForceX. I appreciate your time and effort. When my game is a success, you can expect a cheque from me as my way of saying thanks.

 

Update 1.3.0(RC1)

Changes:
1. Lots of code clean up.
2. FX_3DRadar_Master renamed FX_3DRadar_Mgr.
3. FX_3DRadar_Mgr is now located on a separate gameObject "_GameMgr"
4. View frustum setup method.
5. Custom tags are now Radar_Active, Radar_Inactive, Sub_Component, Origin_Ignore.
6. New tag : Origin_Ignore, This tag will be ignored with the provided floating origin script.

This version was built on Unity 3.4.2f3

This version has some fundamental changes in the way it operates over the previous version, and because of this the current documentation is no longer applicable for this release. New documentation will be created and added to the the package when completed. For now just note the name changes of the script and tags listed above and that the FX_3DRadar_Mgr script needs to be applied to it's own gameObject named "_GameMgr". For the most part everything else should work as it had in the past. Also included is a floating origin reset script that is intended to work with the radar system if you choose to use it, though it is not necessary. The origin script is located on the "_GameMgr" gameObject in the demo scene. This origin script is intended for a single player build and should not be used for multiplayer projects.

 

Update 1.3.1

Fixes:
1.Corrected an issue when a selected target is very close to the player; the HUD target indicator would be incorrectly placed on the screen.

Important
Make sure that the VFB.fbx "Scale Factor" inside the FBX "Import Settings" is set to 1.0.

 

I ran into that problem and tried my best to describe it in a previous post. The weird part is that it only happens if I started my player (and of course the main camera) at a zero rotation. Therefore I don't and the problem disappears.

It is unfortunate that I am not in a position to test your more recent builds. I incorporated your radar into my code over two months ago and it is heavily tied into my own code now. The build I use provides all the functionality that I need (with some modifications) and so I find it difficult to justify the time investment in updating.

So if it is easy to enough for you to describe the fix for that bug I would appreciate it so I can update my older version. If not, don't worry. The workaround of not starting at zero rotation prevents it anyway.

 

@V4nKw15h: That is a strange bug that i have not been able to replicate my self yet with the older versions. If you are using version 1.2.4 or below, then the 1.3.0 above are a bit different as they do not calculate the targets position in exactly the same way. So unfortunately there is no way to simply update a section of code to bring you up to date. If you are using the newer 1.3.0 then i can pm you what you need. It is a simple fix how ever it was unique to 1.3.0. But if you have it working in your project then why fix what's not broken

 

Indeed, it is no big deal to me. I think the only thing I'm concerned about as far as my version is concerned is the changes to the way frustrum planes are calculated in the latest beta of Unity.You mentioned that in a previous post. When the time comes to upgrade I may have to pick your brains on that issue, but I will attempt to read about the changes and sort it out myself first.

I am indeed on the version 1.2.4. btw.

 

This is fantastic! great job man! here's a demo of my work with the radar
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/36378566/planetgen/webdev/WebPlayer/WebPlayer.html
press space to generate planets once you have set the desired parameters! and be cautious I set 4000 planets as the limit but if you want to max it out just repeat the spacebar XD

 

I'm having slight problems with this when putting it to Unity 3.5 project (hope to use it in mobile project)... but hopefully I can solve those when I have more time. Seems to be nice radar... when I can get it to work. Perhaps someone can show example project where they are using this? That demo by MagnusZane is very nice. Just hope I could download some like that to study how they got it working.

 

What issues are you having with Unity 3.5. Let me know and i'll help the best i can.

I know i still need to create the new documentation for the 1.3.0+ versions. Sorry i haven't gotten around to doing it yet.

 

(bookmarked)

 

Looks absolutely amazing - exactly what I'm looking for to make use of in my project. Are you still working on this or is it the finished article now?

(bookmarked)

 

@nockieboy - Thanks I'm glad you like it. I don't think this project will ever be complete. There is all ways something to do (when I have time, which is next to 0 ATM). Feel free to play around and use it in your project. One of these days I might get around to making the Docs for the latest version.

 

Well you're doing a great job!

If I may, there's something I'd like to add to the wishlist now that I've been using it a little while in my project. It would be great if there was the facility to display target health and shield strength beneath the HUD target box - in the form of bars preferably - or any other information that you may want to display. I know this is a specialised request, but I'm sure most people would make use of the facility to display some more information on the target box by exposing a couple of variables to other scripts or something.

At the moment I'm using a separate GUIText floating on the target to display its type and registration (unique to each ship) and one of the next items on my to-do list is to improve the HUD to provide the kind of information above. I was hoping that you could save me a lot of work (I'm learning Unity) and maybe say you're halfway to doing something similar yourself?

If not, any pointers would be much appreciated!

Thanks for such a great product though!