[Rodo]

Suddenly, the retail Collie looks really, really, really good.

No it doesn't!

Also...WOW!

[sigtau]

eyesex

[torc]

again, all this stuff is outstanding...can't wait to see them in game.

also,do you think next time we'll see a FS2 mission with shadows?

[FreeSpaceFreak]

Is it only self-shadowing so far, or do ships also cast shadows on others?

Regardless of the answer, truly awesome work

[MatthTheGeek]

Valathil.

You're doing it wrooooooooong.

If you want to show shadows on rotating subsystems, there's only one truly worthy candidate, and you know it.

Optirayana !

[Darius]

Previously I was joking about the engine looking like this in the future but it's becoming a lot closer than I imagined.

[Rodo]

Laphit?, nice sliding effects.

[Col. Fishguts]

This is gorgeous

How does the performance scale with the polycount of the model?

[CommanderDJ]

DAT ASS SHADOW

[Zacam]

Is it only self-shadowing so far, or do ships also cast shadows on others?

I could be wrong here, but I think the current implementation is just the self shadowing at the moment as that (seems) to be the easiest to manage at the moment.

I forget if multi-light source handling has been mentioned or not, but I suspect that will add some complexity to it.

[MatthTheGeek]

IIRC shadows from point lights were mentioned.

[Herra Tohtori]

Just... a random question here.

Is it possible to make alpha blended particles cast shadows?

[Col. Fishguts]

Is it possible to make alpha blended particles cast shadows?

Don't think so... this implementation works on a polygon basis.
But particles are rendered on a square, so you'd probably end up with the shadow of that square instead of the per-pixel alpha blended shadow you're thinking of. Would be cool though...

[Dragon]

Note, there's no lighting applied to particles. You'd end up with a glowing thing casting shadow.

[Herra Tohtori]

Note, there's no lighting applied to particles. You'd end up with a glowing thing casting shadow.

Not applied TO the particles, but shadows don't require that. Of course glowing particles done with additive blending wouldn't cast shadows, which is why I specified alpha-blended particles - such as smoke trails, flak puffs etc.

If there's the particle's plane, it can cast a projection. And if the particle's texture has alpha, it should be possible to also project said alpha channel so that it's aligned with the shadow, yes?

If so, then it would be just a matter of computing power to multiply the projected rectangular shadows by the alpha channel, resulting in a shadow that in shape corresponds to the particle's opaque parts. If you want to get fancy you could also convolute the final shadow shape to blur the edges, but that's even further addition to computational requirements.


The biggest problem I see here is that there are ****-tons of particles to be handled so it could pose a huge problem performance-wise. Still, it would be rather righteous to see a fighter spewing dark smoke skim on the surface of a destroyer and have the smoketrail cast a shadow... or to see the bombs or missiles impact a ship with their smoke trails casting shadows to the ship's surface.


But, I'm getting ahead of things, as the system currently only seems to support self-shading. Casting shadows on other objects needs to be done first, and obviously getting things to work for 3D objects is of supreme priority compared to particle shadows.

[Dragon]

IRL, smoke doesn't cast too much shadow, unless it's really thick (which would require so many particles that them alone would murder the framerate).
Also, particles are always facing the player, so it may not be so easy to project the them onto a ship's surface as a shadow.
Honestly, even ArmA II doesn't seem to simulate smoke shadows (or maybe the effect is too subtle for me to notice). Maybe in a few years, but today, it might be too performance intensive.

[torc]

i think having shadows in ships and installations is enough for a lot of years... i think the main issue is the performance hit,and one day,freespace 2 will face the need to have  multi cpu support... this will be the king of improvements

[Herra Tohtori]

IRL, smoke doesn't cast too much shadow, unless it's really thick (which would require so many particles that them alone would murder the framerate).
Also, particles are always facing the player, so it may not be so easy to project the them onto a ship's surface as a shadow.
Honestly, even ArmA II doesn't seem to simulate smoke shadows (or maybe the effect is too subtle for me to notice). Maybe in a few years, but today, it might be too performance intensive.

Smoke casts shadows just like clouds.

Which is another aspect of why I suggested this - when we get properly done clouds working, it would be nice for them to cast shadows...

[mjn.mixael]

Valathil is giving us an awesome feature as it is... and it's still very early from what I understand. Let's not go and ask him to shoot for the moon all of a sudden.

[Herra Tohtori]

Valathil is giving us an awesome feature as it is... and it's still very early from what I understand. Let's not go and ask him to shoot for the moon all of a sudden.

That is true, which is why mine was more of a random question rather than a feature request.

My hunch says the number of shadows would become too high with particle shadows anyway for current hardware, but it's just an assumption and I'd love to know if there's any chance to get such a feature working, someday.