Check Zones - Cylinder v Sphere for only checking tanks?

[DD_Friar]

Salute,

 

I am currently working on a mission with quite a few check zones looking out for tank movements.

 

Although there are no AI planes and when we started the mission there were no AI vehicles enabled, I am still getting the "Multi-player server overload - plane behaviour may be erratic" message.

So I wanted to try and "tune" the mission to make it as efficient as possible to stop these messages.

 

All of my zones currently are cylinders. They are set to only check for vehicles for one side or the other. They are also set to quite a small area, 20 meters in fact.

When I tried changing one to a sphere to test it did not fire at either 20 or 40 meters?

 

My knowledge is that cylinders go up to the sky like a tube.

 

My understanding of the sphere zone is that it gives a dome above ground and a dome below ground. I also understand the explanation from the manual about how a plane could not get picked up but thought a tank driving into the "dome" at ground level should work fine?

 

Is anyone able to advice please?

[JimTM]

Can you post a simple mission demonstrating the issue please.

[AEthelraedUnraed]

7 hours ago, DD_Friar said:

My understanding of the sphere zone is that it gives a dome above ground and a dome below ground.

Nope. The sphere is a dome around the Y position (altitude) of the CheckZone. So if you've positioned a sphere at 1000m altitude and a range of 20m, it'll check for vehicles between 980 and 1020 metres altitude (measured at the X and Z positions of the sphere, obviously).

[DD_Friar]

But if the Y is at 162.13, which I assume is ground level for the location as I have not altered that value, that means if I use a sphere it is checking for entries at 142 (below ground) and 182?

 

Can I limit the height of a cylinder ?

 

If I have set the cylinder to only check vehicles am I worrying unnecessarily?

[AEthelraedUnraed]

22 minutes ago, DD_Friar said:

But if the Y is at 162.13, which I assume is ground level for the location as I have not altered that value, that means if I use a sphere it is checking for entries at 142 (below ground) and 182?

Yes, a sphere at Y 162 will check entities from 142 to 182 in altitude. Remember that this is a sphere though: if you fly at 10m above the ground (so Y 172), your distance needs to be 20*sqrt(10/20) ~ 14m from the XZ location of the sphere before it's triggered.

 

22 minutes ago, DD_Friar said:

Can I limit the height of a cylinder ?

Nope. Currently, the only way to detect height is by using very large spheres placed at a certain altitude.

 

22 minutes ago, DD_Friar said:

If I have set the cylinder to only check vehicles am I worrying unnecessarily?

Worrying about what? You mean the height of the cylinder? Vehicles don't fly, so the height of the cylinder doesn't matter if the CheckZones are set to only detect vehicles.

 

EDIT: made a quick drawing. The CheckZone MCU is placed at the location of the red "x". All vehicles that drive into the red circle are detected.

Edited April 27, 2022 by AEthelraedUnraed

[JG4_Deciman]

Hi there

 

Either a cylinder (height can NOT be limited)

or a Sphere (like a Ball, where the height of the center can be set)

 

But as you only want to check ground based units the eight can be ignored completely

So cylinder is OK

 

Deci