[torc]

you right....but them would work on cockpits, then adding an option for disabling them

[Valathil]

cockpits currently have no shadows. i would probably have to do another high resolution geometry pass to do cockpit shadows its not worth it in my opinion. i have an idea to increase the number of shadow slices but i have to benchmark that and see how the gpu holds up. if it negligible i could conceivably do cockpit shadows.

[Ace]

Just tested them. If it wasn't for some bugs in trunk like the thruster issue that we fixed with the Diaspora patches (that need to go back to trunk) I'd stick with a shadow build.

All of the R1 missions look great with the shadow effects, my system is pretty heavy duty so no performance issues here.

[attachment removed and sold on the black market]

[Valathil]

i just updated the archive on dropbox to fix a crash ive been having and to fix a black border in windowed mode so if you have crashes on mission load redownload.

[torc]

what i meant isn't the shadows into the cockpit model, but in what you see in 1st person view like the external hull, the nose etc.
I can understand that use shadows into cockpits should be more GPU expensive, but if you think about it, cockpits occupy half of your monitor...so having shadows outside and having all your fighter completely ''isolated'' from shadows seems a bit unconsistent IMO.

Plus, i can't explain the great performance loss compared to the alpha build... IIRC i tested a version where the shadows worked in 1st person view, and them were more high detailed than the current beta, but no FPS drops too much.

Anyway i'd like to point you did a great job on this, no complaints, just suggestions and feedbacks 

[Kobrar44]

torc, how feasible would it be to make cockpit in the normal model a detailbox which is invisible at very short range and give the ship a 'show ship' flag so that from 1st person you only see a fuselage and a hole where the cockpit would be? This hole could be filled with external cockpit model which wouldn't receive any shadows as it doesn't now.

[Nighteyes]

torc, how feasible would it be to make cockpit in the normal model a detailbox which is invisible at very short range and give the ship a 'show ship' flag so that from 1st person you only see a fuselage and a hole where the cockpit would be? This hole could be filled with external cockpit model which wouldn't receive any shadows as it doesn't now.

The main problem with this method, is that the model of a simple fighter would become incredibly large, think about it, every single fighter, raptors, MK7e's will all be carrying around with them the high detailed cockpit and its textures...

[Kobrar44]

It's not what I meant. I say, keep the EXTERNAL model, reduced to bare hpoly cockpit and FILL the hole in REGULAR ship model using engine features, if there are such. If there aren't, you have the coder support if you find this idea good enough. Fuselage with hole as 'show ship' plus hpoly cockpit as 'cockpit pof file'.

[torc]

Kobrar 44 thanks for the consideration... but i'm only an sound FX monkey

All the ideas here would be put under Valathil's eyes.
I'm just leaving feedback whit my shadows build  experience...since i've had the chance to test both alpha and beta whit Diaspora.

[Valathil]

Shadows are now merged with the deferred lighting build @ http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=81376.0