What I do for height in MapTool is simply add the elevation to the label of the token. It is really quick and easy and takes care of the z-plane. You will have to do the math for the angle distances, but you would do that anyway if you were playing at the table.
Bill Stickers is innocent! It isn't Bill's fault that he was hanging out in the wrong place.
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Actually, I used a ruler, line-of-sight, and vector addition. It's amazing how much math you don't have to do once you understand how the math actually works. It wouldn't be terribly difficult to set up a spreadsheet to do the trig, though, so that might work.Originally Posted by RPMiller
As to how I imagine the display... well, I don't know. Perhaps a primary top-down view and a secondary elevation display. To be honest, I hadn't even thought about it until something in another thread prompted me to do so (a comment about 3d models instead of tokens). So I don't have any preconceived ideas yet.
In any case, you've answered my question: No, there isn't one out there at this time, but probably any of them could be used the way RPM describes. At the very least, using a VTT is superior in almost every way to using a table and minis for this purpose, for the reasons previously given.
Bryan Ray, visual effects artist
http://www.bryanray.name
In another thread Blender (www.Blender.org) was brought up as a 3D animation tool. It's open source and free too.
You could import models of the ships and place them in 3D space. Then use the built in measurement tools to determine the distances and angles involved. The ability to pan and rotate the camera would be invaluable in that situation.
A nice projector or an HDTV with DVI inputs would be helpfull for the player at the back of the room to see what's going on.
All of this is assuming that you are gaming at a table, my idea won't help at all with remote players.
And you could make each turn a keyframe and output a rendering of the fight, should it need to be recorded for later.
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