[RandomTiger]

Originally posted by IceFire
1) Enhanced framerates and better visual quality - specular highlights, no-dim lights in D3D, bump mapping, trilinear filtering (I don't think FS2 does it and I think it helps give that nice smooth graphical feel to things)

Thats why Im working on DX8.
It wont give us those things initially but it provides a more realistic base than DX5.

2) Greater environment interaction - better control over debris, asteroid fields, a better background system so more detailed background nebula can be setup (i'm not sure how other games do this, but FreeLancer can do this nifty detailed backgrounds and I can't do this with FS2 at present), sun and ambient light controls beyond the current abilities (ambient control is a hacked and slash version of what it could be)
[/B]

Hmm, not really my area.

3) Little things - such as particle effect weapons, real laser trails (adding a missile trail draws the trail at the edge of the bitmap rather than center), pcx muzzle flashes, sun lense flares
[/B]

Perhaps once DX8 is in we can look for code like this at places like flipcode.com

That is a lot of work but if people stick around and work at it I dont see why we cant have a lot of those things.

Really the bottle necks are DX8 and HT&L, until they are done we cant really do anything special with the graphics.

[Bobboau]

while looking through modelinterp.cpp I found an interesting bit of commented out code right below model_interp_defpoints, specificly interp_compute_environment_mapping
I don't think it works though

[tomcat]

i really misse the point of this ..what a heck you need a 2500 p Fighter? for cap ships maybe ..so i think the performace boost is what we need...HT&L hmm maybe..

[IceFire]

RandomTiger: Yep...I have a pretty good idea that what I've put there is a big list and none of it will be easy.  But I thought I would articulate what I think people are after (in general).  As I said, I hold no unrealistic timeframes on how quickly or slowly this would be done.  We're fans, it takes time.  I know how long things take....I've been with TBP now for almost 3 years plus.  I can wait

Oh and Lens Flare code was added to FS1 at one time.  It was removed later.  Remnants of it may still be in the code however.

[RandomTiger]

Originally posted by IceFire

Oh and Lens Flare code was added to FS1 at one time.  It was removed later.  Remnants of it may still be in the code however.

Searched for the phrase 'lens flare' but nothing came up, if its in there is damn well hidden.

[Raven2001]

I guess Ice said it all

[Sandwich]

Originally posted by Sesquipedalian
Hmm, maybe I should fire up my super-duper-fast-as-lightening-always-gorgeous-Shivan-texture-tile-maker in Corel PhotoPaint and whip out some nice new high-res textures for use on Shivan capital ships.

Are you being serious here? Let's see some screenies.

Originally posted by Hades
Also, I can maybe get some better suns. 16.7 million color ones. I just need to screw with the colors, because I don't have a white one.

Uhm.... the suns are the _last_ thing that would benefit from increased colors...

[Fry_Day]

Small Notes: for standard (spherical) env-mapping you simply use U = (Vertex_Normal.X)/2 + 0.5
V = (Vertex_Normal.Y)/2 + 0.5
Now use a simple highlight as a texture with that and do an add-blend with the regular texture, and you've got a fake specular highlight. Ta Da. If you're really bored you can also write a pixel shader that does fake bump-mapping by using the bump-map data as an offset for where you sample the highlight texture.

Also, lens flare is surprisingly simple. basically you take the sun's coordinates in screen-space (or any other source of a lens flare), and draw all the flares in an imaginary line between the sun's x,y to (maxX-sunX,maxY-SunY).Here's some pseudo-code:
if (sun is visible)
 end.x=max.x-sun.x
 end.y=max.y-sun.y
 delta.x=end.x-sun.x
 delta.y=end.y-sun.y
 set_blend(source_one,dest_one)
 enable(alpha_blend)
 draw("flare_main.pcx",sun.x,sun.y)
 draw("flare1.pcx",sun.x+delta*0.2f,sun.y+delta*0.2f)
 draw("flare1.pcx",sun.x+delta*0.8f,sun.y+delta*0.8f)
 draw("flare2.pcx",sun.x+delta*0.1f,sun.y+delta*0.1f)
 draw("flare2.pcx",sun.x+delta*0.7f,sun.y+delta*0.7f)
 draw("flare3.pcx",sun.x+delta*0.5f,sun.y+delta*0.5f)
 draw("flare3.pcx",sun.x+delta*0.9f,sun.y+delta*0.9f)
 restore_states()

That's all there is to it. I pretty sure it's not mathematically correct, but the non-uniform spread of the flares looks nicer, and you can also use more flare types and play with the spread. It's that simple.