HMSD TopOwl System

0.4.5

dded
Rotor-span scan on takeoff (calibration / onboard cache; footprint shape depends on the helicopter). Ground points must be green before takeoff (a dedicated status icon will come later).
Ground footprint overlay in first person (low approach).
GPS beacon count on friendly vehicle IFF squares (hidden when count is 0).
Lateral door gunners: reticle and pipper at 50% size and −25% opacity.
Soft console performance preset (lighter X-Ray when enabled).
Changed
IR mode removed from the NVG/IR cycle and the X-Ray cycle (disabled, code kept) → cycles reduced to NVG on/off and optical X-Ray on/off.
GPS beacon range aligned with IFF (2000 m).
On-foot beacon = chevron; in a vehicle = count on friendly IFF.
Cable detection is event-driven (no permanent inventory scan).
Landing radar: smoothed threats, refined distance bands, soft vegetation / belly filtering; UI 25% smaller and slightly more transparent.
Ground impact circle less twitchy (smoothing + flare behavior).
NVG/HDR: restore engine auto-exposure on exit; day/night latch fixed; FOV lamps affect gain only.
Various FPS optimizations (IFF, beacons, footprint, instruments, gunner angles, map markers, seat/life/damage events).
Removed / disabled
IR mode from the NVG/IR cycle and the X-Ray cycle.

0.4.4

IR / NVG
IR_GRID (primary N mode): AutoGain FLIR-style material (AutomaticLowHighPL) with sky temperature clamps, plus raycast sky grid + geometric horizon crop and opaque fake-sky fill
IR_WHITE (A/B): G0–G4 fixed-window presets, full-FOV RT (no horizon crop)
Night uses a damped AutoGain variant on GRID; day/night material swap hardened so a night preset cannot stick into daylight
AutoGain LUT fixed to WhiteHot_01 (invalid WhiteHot_02 caused a grey veil)
Critical fix — blown-out / “cramé” screen after night → day
Fixed main-camera HDR left boosted after NVG/IR use: gains are fully cleared on OFF / leaving NVG, and only reapplied when NVG is turned back on
Covers GameMaster / Zeus night→day switches so daylight no longer stays washed white after a night sensor session
Perf
Default IR grid scan aggro moderated (no full 84 TraceMove every frame)

0.4.3

Flight HUD
Digital cap = aircraft heading; heading tape = helmet LOS (tens labels, N/E/S/W)
Left R scale (redundant AGL) replaced by P (main rotor power % Nr)
P layout: numbers toward pitch ladder, tick on the outside, block slightly lower
AGL caret capped at 100 m (numeric readout still climbs above 100)
MSL / airspeed frames raised in the HUD
VSI-style smoothing on airspeed, MSL, AGL, and P
Gunner boxes lowered (no more overlap with the VSI)
Pitch ladder / waterline / bank: first-person pilot/CPG only (no leftover symbology after exit or in 3rd person)
Failure / caution panel
Strip moved between bank and pitch, width matches the heading tape
Smoke/fire via flammable hit zones (SCR_EBurningState) — no more silent smoking
Thresholds: yellow < ~92%, red < ~70%, HS = destroyed; FIRE = flames / igniting smoke
HFI (hostile fire)
Fixed false positives: rocket pods on parked / empty helos no longer count as launches
Filter: in-flight munitions only (speed + not still mounted)
Misc
Vehicle IFF contact range: 2.0 km (was 2.5 km)
Perf: single-pass failure hit-zone scan, P-scale controller cache, HFI ~20 Hz + early speed reject
Debug mode off (Workshop build)
Not in this update
IR / sensor fusion work (next)

0.4.2

Performance
Fixed major FPS drop when entering an armed helicopter (up to -25/30 FPS measured): caused by uncached recursive vehicle-tree traversals and weapon lookups being recomputed multiple times per frame.
Cached the BaseWeaponManagerComponent lookup per vehicle root
Cached the pilot-accessible weapons list (400ms TTL)
Cached the turret entity list per vehicle root
Result: profiled cost of the weapon reticle section dropped from ~13ms/frame to ~0-1ms/frame
Fixed a reentrancy bug that could run the HUD update loop multiple times on the same engine tick (duplicated work)
Removed a redundant per-frame camera rebind in FULL_IR mode (possible source of micro-stutter)
Reduced X-Ray/IR render target resolution and PIP camera view distance (this was the actual GPU cost of the 2nd camera, not its refresh rate)
Reticle / pipper smoothness
Boresight raycast now computed every frame (no more throttling) — removes stepped/jerky crosshair movement
Reticle/pipper smoothing moved from screen-space to world-space (applied before projection) — removes the lag felt during camera movement while still filtering visual noise
Added caching/throttling to the lead pipper's ballistic intercept search (previously uncached, causing stutter for gunners)
Loosened CCIP cache tolerances so small movements no longer force a full ballistic recompute every frame
Calibration probe (auto-CCIP calibration)
Fixed massive false "Calib REJECT" errors on rapid-fire weapons (miniguns/GAU-19): the probe now tracks the actual fired projectile using a motion-compensated search (follows the expected position along the trajectory instead of only searching near the muzzle)
Removed a biased fallback that compared ballistic-drop CCIP against a straight-line raycast on timeout, which produced large purely geometric "errors" unrelated to real calibration accuracy
Pipper visuals
Removed brackets from cannon/minigun ("+") and rocket ("O") pippers; missile pipper unchanged ("[ ]")
Fixed a centering bug (missing CENTER/VCENTER alignment) that made the pipper symbol appear offset from the actual calculated impact point — no ballistic recalibration needed, this was purely visual
X-Ray / IR
Investigated reported jerkiness in X-Ray band and thermal (IR) view:
Raised the internal render target refresh cap from 30 to 60 FPS (was out of sync with the main view's 60/90 FPS)
Fixed the redundant per-frame camera rebind noted above (FULL_IR)
No perceptible difference reported in testing; kept as a safe consistency/efficiency improvement, no further changes made on this front for now

0.4.1

Weapons / dual pippers
Dual-mount support: twin guns/rockets/missiles now show two independent CCIP pippers (one per pod); single mounts keep one pipper + boresight
Active weapon / pod detection rewritten for vanilla and modded helos (AH-6, Apache, UH-1 packs, WCS Empty pylons, etc.)
Countermeasures excluded (flares / CMS); junk mounts filtered (lights, Hydra cables, etc.)
Reticle glyphs by type: cannon X/[+], rockets O/[o], missiles [ ]
Note: “which pod fires next” highlight in single-fire dual mode is still incomplete
CCIP
Improved impact prediction (engine ballistic table for guns; rocket ToF drop when no table)
Max prediction range 5 km; no ground pipper when aiming into the sky / “to infinity”
Hover velocity noise clamped to reduce pipper drift
CCIP learning calibration
Learns a small aim-space offset per weapon + ammo (not per helicopter)
Persists in player profile ($profile:HMCS/ccip_calib.txt) across sessions
Capped to 48 entries (tiny file, console-friendly); probe throttled for miniguns
Performance
Landing radar sector scan throttled (~8 Hz) and ray density reduced (major FPS win on console when low & slow)

0.4.0

New
Lead pipper V1: red line + cue (+ guns / o rockets) on enemy/neutral vehicles in the forward aim gate (unguided weapons only), max 2.5 km
NVG + full-FOV IR for gunner seats (no X-Ray band)
Improved
Rocket CCIP: pipper follows boresight/laser (no fake excessive drop)
Better rocket weapon classification / ballistics on modded helos
IFF hidden on DESTROYED vehicle wrecks
Fixed
Possible game crash when destroying a lead-pipper target
Over-aggressive IFF filter that could hide healthy vehicles
Slightly lower boresight reticle opacity
Perf note
Landing radar aid remains expensive on console (known; further opts planned)

0.3.10

v0.4.0

CONTROLS
- New Options > Controls category: HMSD TopOwl
- Rebindable: Cycle NVG/IR (N), Cycle X-Ray (End), Gain +/− (Page Up/Down)
- Fixed hardcoded Workbench key fallbacks that kept default keys active after rebind
- Fixed keybind stacking (N+J+K) when rebinding repeatedly
- Input config aligned with standard Reforger rebind pattern (FilterPreset toggle)

X-RAY / SENSORS
- X-Ray band cycle (End): Off → Optical → IR → Off
- X-Ray defaults to Off (better Xbox/console FPS until enabled)
- Full IR (N) and X-Ray band no longer stack a second thermal pass

GUNNER
- Head-slaved chin turret aim (IHADSS-style) for menton turrets only (WIP)
- Door-gun mouse gimbals excluded

PERFORMANCE
- Fewer per-frame input/context activations
- See-through camera masks applied once (not every frame)
- Full IR render target capped at 30 FPS (was 60)
- Skipped redundant HUD opacity / IR exposure calls on hot path
- RenderTarget format/scale/clear gated to avoid console static / realloc spam

MISC
- Cleaner input profile handling after rebind

0.3.9

0.3.8

0.3.7

0.3.6

0.3.5

## 0.3.3

**Critical fixes**
- HUD: fixed an initialization bug that could prevent the HUD from displaying at all in certain cases (e.g. helicopter + cable in inventory).

**Game Master / camera view**
- HUD no longer displays while in free Game Master camera, but remains active normally in "Play" mode (possessing a character/AI from the editor).
- The HUD (visor) no longer displays in third-person view — consistent with a helmet that only makes sense in first-person view.

**Weapons**
- Fixed pipper/CCIP on modded helicopters: the weapon used for ballistic calculations (velocity/trajectory) now always matches the weapon actually being aimed.
- Fixed reticle/pipper alignment on helicopters with symmetric twin weapon pods (dual rocket pods or dual miniguns): the aim point is now averaged across both weapons instead of being aligned to only one side, so both sides land on target.

**Controls**
- Default keybinds (N to cycle NVG/IR, Page Up / Page Down for IR gain +/-) are now properly registered and rebindable in Settings > Controls (fixes "Action not found" and grayed-out entries).

**Landing radar**
- Now accounts for actual obstacle height relative to the rotor blades (threshold based on main rotor height on the sides, and on the lower tail rotor height at the rear): no more false alerts on low obstacles (bushes, etc.) that can't reach the blades.
- Improved recognition of flat platforms/helipads as safe ground (instead of sometimes being flagged as hazardous).

0.3.4

0.3.3

## 0.3.3

**Critical fixes**
- HUD: fixed an initialization bug that could prevent the HUD from displaying at all in certain cases.

**Game Master / camera view**
- HUD no longer displays while in free Game Master camera, but remains active normally in "Play" mode (possessing a character/AI from the editor).
- The HUD (visor) no longer displays in third-person view — consistent with a helmet that only makes sense in first-person view.

**Weapons**
- Fixed pipper/CCIP on modded helicopters: the weapon used for ballistic calculations (velocity/trajectory) now always matches the weapon actually being aimed, fixing rockets that weren't hitting where the reticle indicated.

**Controls**
- Fixed keybind label: "Gain NVG/IR +/-" (instead of "Gain IR").

**Landing radar**
- Now accounts for actual obstacle height relative to the rotor blades (threshold based on main rotor height on the sides, and on the lower tail rotor height at the rear): no more false alerts on low obstacles (bushes, etc.) that can't reach the blades.
- Improved recognition of flat platforms/helipads as safe ground (instead of sometimes being flagged as hazardous).

0.3.2