Tank Shells Being Stopped by Tree Leaves

[SeattleRex]

The first time I thought it was just a fluke, but I just played another mission, and sure enough, an enemy tank, at only about 400m, was impervious to my shells because tree leaves hanging from a nearby branch were just partially in front of the enemy tank.

 

Last time I encountered this, I found it impossible to shoot an enemy tank through gap in the foliage.  There was clearly enough room for the shell to go through without touching a leaf, but each time I fired, the shell would turn into a small white explosion right upon entering the gap, as if there were an invisible plane across the shrubbery through which a shell could not penetrate.

 

Have others encountered this?  Does anyone know how to solve this?  Is there any way to, I suppose, just turn off trees entirely, or is it intentional that you're not allowed to penetrate single thin branch or even single leaves of trees?

 

FWIW, I was using using a Tiger I today, amor piercing round.

[SeattleRex]

Oh dang, I just found another thread related to this, and it's from 2019, which I assume means it's here to stay.

 

To be clear, I am NOT talking about firing through a tree trunk.  I'm talking about firing through a very small number of leaves, and in some cases, just close to leaves (through a gap surrounded by, but not obstructed by leaves).  It's kind of odd to have the enemy tank fill up your viewfinder, but because a small part of his tank is behind a tree the size of Charlie Brown's Christmas Tree, it is completely impervious to all shells fired at it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited June 6 by SeattleRex

[Aapje]

9 hours ago, SeattleRex said:

or is it intentional that you're not allowed to penetrate single thin branch or even single leaves of trees?

 

You just discovered hitboxes. Calculating whether there is a collision between a projectile and a complex object is quite difficult and thus takes a lot of computing power. So games often just draw one or more boxes on/around the object, because it is far easier to calculate whether a line (the trajectory of the projectile) goes through a box.

 

 

So in this picture, you can see that you would hit the characters even if you shoot slightly over their heads, or next to them, or between their legs.

 

Also, objects in games are typically a lot less detailed than they look, and the detail is not achieved by actual geometric shapes, but by textures. And these textures can be partially transparent, so from the perspective of the geometric 3D engine, what looks like empty space to you, may actually be an object with a texture on it, that is partially transparent.

[SeattleRex]

That actually makes sense.  Thank you so much!

 

Shouldn't it know what's in the hitbox, though, and if it's say, a leaf, either ignore the object or slow the projectile by a few m/s or whatever?  

 

It feels like the presence of a hitbox containing a low-mass object should not be sufficient to stop a tank shell, do you know what I mean?

 

As it is, all hitboxes are being treated as indestructible entities, and given that it's fairly routine for a tank to try to position itself behind foliage, the sim is breaking with reality quite a bit by making that foliage completely shield the tank.

 

CTA-GOH does the same thing and it drives me crazy.  If a tank is parked behind a wooden post rail fence, and your shell hits one of the wood beams, the beam evaporates, but the tank behind it doesn't get a scratch.    This "there must be clear air between a gun and it's target" thing seems to be common, but it breaks realism pretty hard.

Edited August 20 by SeattleRex

[AndyJWest]

4 hours ago, SeattleRex said:

That actually makes sense.  Thank you so much!

 

Shouldn't it know what's in the hitbox, though, and if it's say, a leaf, either ignore the object or slow the projectile by a few m/s or whatever?  

 

A tree will consist of a small number of large hitboxes: probably one for the trunk, and a few more for the remainder, enclosing the whole volume. Creating and checking hitboxes for individual leaves would require a huge amount of CPU resources. There are ways to minimise this, and I'm sure IL-2 GB will use them, but it simply isn't feasible to achieve what you are asking for.

[Avimimus]

They could implement an RNG based effect though - For instance: Randomly let 1/3rd of rounds pass through unhindered.

[AndyJWest]

21 minutes ago, Avimimus said:

They could implement an RNG based effect though - For instance: Randomly let 1/3rd of rounds pass through unhindered.

 

I'm not sure that would be helpful, in the situation the OP describes. Putting successive rounds along exactly the same trajectory and getting different results is going to be frustrating. If your first round doesn't get through the trees, should you fire another, or move?

 

Part of the issue here is that things like hitboxes etc need to be able to deal with tanks (where odd effects firing through trees become immediately apparent) and aircraft (where it's all moving too fast to be as noticeable, but you need to calculate a lot of trajectories in real time, and have to compromise). A specialised tank sim can probably afford to put more resources (developer time, CPU cycles) into modelling such details, and they'll have a smaller map, with less to model.

[Avimimus]

Assuming that there are branches and things like recoil or wind lead to slight deviations in trajectory, it might be quite plausible that two shots fired as close together as possible might meet different degrees of resistance.

 

I think, given the level of detail of the Tree 3d models, most players wouldn't be able to tell one way or the other.

 

P.S. Perhaps one could have the RNG set differently for different sized rounds?