[FireCrack]

Originally posted by MicroPsycho
Have you thought of making the gun barrels hexagonal? Not a regular hexagon but more like a triangle with 'flattened' corners.

i was originaly considering that, but it would add some unnescecary polygons, wich is bad

[Galemp]

Hardly. A few extra polies in the right place would do much for the gun barrel debate. Unneccesary polies are when you have a field of tiled polygons on a flat surface, or when a curve is defined with 32 segments where 16 would do.

[FireCrack]

Well, my poiint is that if i did that they'd be preety durn small... i could try it i suppose...

[StratComm]

The number of polys you'll use making that round will be only slightly higher than the number you've got invested in the gaps at the end right now (I don't think that's worth making geometry for anyway, leave that in textures) and the panel on the outside.  It doesn't have to be more than AT MOST a 12-sided cylinder.

EDIT: And actually, here's a suggestion for a hybrid.  It's a little poly-heavy for a gunmount, but that's one of the more prominent features on an ursa so it might be worth considering.

[Galemp]

Interesting, and certainly unconventional, but a bit too bold I think. Maybe have those framing brackets thinner, supporting the round barrel but not dominating it?

Or use the triangle as a base and truncate the edges somewhere between these values.

[mikhael]

Second one from the top, I say.

[Gregster2k]

yeah, that one is really good, but i think the original one he HTLed is alright too

[Mongoose]

I'm really liking StratComm's idea myself

[Nuclear1]

Originally posted by Mongoose
I'm really liking StratComm's idea myself

[Fade Rathnik]

second from the top

[mikhael]

I like Stratcomm's idea in general, but I feel like it wastes polys in a way that won't get a good return in the final model.

[StratComm]

Make it a detail box subobject

I do agree with you, by the way.  It's a huge investment of polys for relatively little return.  Roughly 300 tris, not counting the block on the back.

[mikhael]

Someone should talk to me about this whole detail box subobject thing.

[Mongoose]

Is 300 really that big of a deal, though?  What is the acceptable limit for polies on an HTL'ed fighter?  It's a rare time when you see more than four Ursas in any mission (the only time I can remember seeing more was in the penultimate mission of Destiny of Peace for FS1, and possibly in the last mission of ST), so would going a little bit overbudget cause that big of a performance hit?

[mikhael]

You miss the point. Its not 300 polys pushing the thing over the limits of the engine. Its burning 300 polys for nothing more than fancying up a gun barrel.

Its like paying $300 for a paper back book when you can pay $20 for a hardback. So you've got $10000 in your wallet, but c'mon, $300 for a paperback book? That's just dumb.

[Galemp]

Unless he used an alpha-mapped texture to make the triangular frame, which would only use... ((9x3)+7)x3+7=109 polies, triangulated with 9-sided gun barrels. It would need an additional texture map, or the modification of an existing one, but it would be worth the effort.

You could even make the triangular frame extend out slightly further than the end of the barrel, and end up with that slotted gap in the end that's on the current textures.

[Black Wolf]

Originally posted by mikhael
You miss the point. Its not 300 polys pushing the thing over the limits of the engine. Its burning 300 polys for nothing more than fancying up a gun barrel.

Its like paying $300 for a paper back book when you can pay $20 for a hardback. So you've got $10000 in your wallet, but c'mon, $300 for a paperback book? That's just dumb.

I disagree. As long as it's all on one texture, polies are almost irrelevant with the HTL engine. Given that the Ursa is probably never going to be deployed all that heavily (ie. no more than 4 or 8 in any given mission at any given time) the increased quality is worth it when you're only talking 300 polies or so (out of a 3000 or so poly budget anyway).

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by mikhael
You miss the point. Its not 300 polys pushing the thing over the limits of the engine. Its burning 300 polys for nothing more than fancying up a gun barrel.

Its like paying $300 for a paper back book when you can pay $20 for a hardback. So you've got $10000 in your wallet, but c'mon, $300 for a paperback book? That's just dumb.

LOD, LOD, LOD, LOD, LOD, LOD............

[Galemp]

LODs aren't working right now, if you haven't noticed. For some reason FSO is using LOD0 as LOD1 as well and bumping all the other LODs down. This is resulting in major performace hits for me.

[StratComm]

Try reducing your detail level, as I think it's directly tied to that.