Animated Ground Crew

[II/JG17_HerrMurf]

How much memory/resources/etc would animated ground crew take up? Say a dude endlessly turning a wrench on a static aircraft. Particularly if they are not wandering around or making any decisions.

 

Would it be possible to semi-actively animate the airfields with bots doing a single task without having them make multi-pronged decisions which eat up memory? Their tasks would not need to actually interact with players or AI, just other static objects.

 

The list of tasks could be infinite but a a dozen or two crew doing menial tasks would seriously add to the immersion. Kind of like the endlessly welding dude in the start up screen. But a a couple dozen different tasks strategically placed about an airfield would really bring it to life. You could even just re-skin the bots for other airfields (Soviet v German v Japanes v American v Italian v etc) to keep the development work to a minimum.

 

1. Refuling

2. Washing windows - gotta be better than the guy who's doing this task now

3. Turning wrenches

4. Jacking bombs up

5. Smoking and/or hanging out with a vehicle

6. Walking a prop

7. Hoisting a motor

8. Endlessly welding

9. Checking a brake line or a chock

10. Loading ammo

 

The list is rather endless but man, if it doesnt take many resources, it would be really fantastic. Even better would be a couple dozen animated bots and another couple dozen true static dudes.

 

1. Napping in a chair or lying in the grass on break

2. Eating

3. Playing cards

4. Standing in the control towers

5. Reading a newspaper

6. Checking rigging

7. Strapping a pilot into his seat

 

5tuka posted this video with what appears to be just STATIC dudes at the 1:50 mark.

 

 

When I saw it I was like, "Wow, that really makes the airfield POP." So, I'd be happy with static but a simple recurring animation doesn't seem unrealistic and would bring a real sense of life to the ground.  If the performance cost is low, I can't imagine the design would take very long or cost a Dev cycle to complete. Frankly, if the animation is a no go I'd take all of the above as statics in a heartbeat.

Edited May 29, 2016 by [LBS]HerrMurf

[=362nd_FS=Hiromachi]

Ye, something like that would take time and resources but would add more to immersion and detail. Considering we already have Ai trucks or Sdkfz, it should not be a big deal to pull tractors, bulldozers, fuel trucks and crew operating them. 

 

But to go a step further and animate all people around ? I'm even more for that, but not sure how much it would take to bring us such elements. 

[II/JG17_HerrMurf]

I'd take statics for the short term at the very least. I think that's all they are in the video and holy cow it adds to the scenery.