This is actually a good question. I actually am not sure. Scout Radar Motion Spotter Motion Dart ect.
I would like to know as well. Im not sure but i think it works as a cylinder, because i can pick up people inside biolabs in a wide radius from the ground floor. (Unless my memory is wrong)
It's a cylinder. The way I determined it: Fire one at the ground below a Biolab airpad. You'll have much less coverage of players at the top of the airpad than when you fire it on the airpad itself. The easiest way is of course: use a level 1 recon dart. It doesn't have the range to go all the way up to the airpad. If it doesn't scan people at the top you know that it's a cylinder and not a column. Also, seeing that an aircraft with scout radar at the flight ceiling cannot see people at the ground is a big indication.
Your method doesn't clarify if it's a cylinder or a sphere, just that the range is limited to all directions. We know it's not an unlimited column. Maybe you got the words wrong? Cylinder: Sphere: @OP: What you could do to determine the shape is to start with an aircraft with scout radar, and slowly descend down towards a busy biolab fight. If you see a circular area of red dots slowly getting wider, it's a sphere. If all the dots appear at once it's a cylinder. Better equip vehicle stealth too to avoid getting shot out of the sky before you get close enough.
It isn't since anything that doesn't server-render won't show up on anything. Remember, Infantry will NOT render to an aircraft if the aircraft is more than 300m up above them. And then detection won't pick them up either. Even if it is a cylinder. Still can test it though. Just fly within 201-299m (if max rank) of the ground. If you see ants on the ground moving around but not on the minimap, then its a sphere, otherwise its a cylinder
Check out the big brain on Brad! I think you just raised Forumside IQ, for like, 10 seconds Yes I would love to know
I thought testing had shown that recon darts are spherical but motion spotters are cylinders. You'd have to test scout radars themselves to know which camp they fall in.
another safer way of doing it could be to park an ESF somewhere with scout radar with three of buddies on another faction with rangefinder, have two of them move to opposite sides of the parked ESF and use rangefinder to get at the extreme edge of scout radar's coverage, the have the ESF take off and the third guy center himself where the ESF was relative to the two other players. take the ESF up with the mini map expanded and see which disappear first, the guys at the edges or all of them at the same time. That would tell you if the radar is spherical or cylindrical. if you don't want to be bothered you could try this on PTS or outside of primetime.
Yes I meant sphere, I mixed it up after reading the OP. My recon darts can see the top of the biolab airpad, but have a smaller range than when I place them on the airpad themselves. The logical conclusion: It's a sphere that detects some people with the smaller diameter of the top, with a cylinder it wouldn't have.
I don't recall having done scientific testing on this, but I have a lot of gametime experience to indicate that the detection radius is a SPHERE. At the very least the (up/down) range is not unlimited. Very tall buildings can prevent you from getting tracking information above or below you depending on where the sensor is. My experience is mostly based on infiltrator sensors, but I think it is a fair assumption to think that all sensors basically use the same code with different parameters (ie. range and such). It wouldn't make sense to not reuse the same code for vehicle scanners unless there was a very good reason for it. The reason some games have cylindrical radar systems is that (a) the calculation is slightly less expensive to perform when you can discard the height information, and (b) it usually doesn't matter so much if the game has limited vertically. PS2 is somewhat unusual that sense due to its scale of terrain and buildings. Hope that helps. It should be fairly easy to check as one poster noted earlier in case you want to make sure about the details. -Stigma
i believe its a sphere, best way to test it would be hovering really high over enemies in an ESF, i really think its a sphere though.
It's a sphere. The game just calculates distance much like the distance value you see above waypoints.
After some rather minimal testing, I've come to the conclusion that is it a sphere. All I did was get maxed scout radar valk, flew over a 48-96 and ascended. After I got pretty high up, their were no dots on the map, when I descended a bit, they all showed up again. A: Sphere.
If they all showed up at the same time then it is a cylinder not a sphere. if you have five people, one in the center, the other four opposite each other on the north, east, west and south edges in a sphere on level terrain and you raise that sphere above the center dude the people on the edges will leave the sphere first, lowering a sphere into the same group above the center player, that player will enter the sphere first, not the other four people on the edges. with what i said in mind look at cylinder vs sphere if you don't get it. In my example if you replace the sphere for a cylinder with players positions the same way on level ground all players will disappear or appear on scout radar at the same time.
We get it. Answer is still a sphere. All radar is just a distance calculation (i.e. radius of a sphere).
Why are you taking it personally? He's replying to someone who apparently didn't get it and explaining.
Why would you think it's being taken personally? Five people in a row gave the same answer to the question, yourself included. There's no need to re-clarify the question.
