[Drew]

what the hell is 2D-POF?

[Col. Fishguts]

Originally posted by taylor

Is that affect better or worse?  I've set the shininess to 65 though values of 85-90 appear to match D3D better.  I made it 65 because I think it looks better but that's just my opinion.  If you'd rather have it more D3D like then let me know.

Hard to say, it's a matter of personal preference I think. And we are all used to the D3D shiny look.
So...err....what have the others to say ?

[mitac]

Personally, I prefer the D3D style.

[taylor]

Originally posted by Drew
what the hell is 2D-POF?

2d_poof is an option used for rendering nebula to not use HTL.  Basically it restores to default look by not rendering the bitmaps in 3D space.  You can check out Mantis bugs 167 and 168 which deal with this.  I mostly fixed the overwhite problem and magnification pixelation in OpenGL so the 3D version looks much better than it did.

Originally posted by mitac
Personally, I prefer the D3D style.

I changed it to 90.  It's never going to match D3D exactly though.  The numbers in OpenGL go from 0 to 128 with the lower end being a less focused and broader light and the higher numbers being more focused and narrower light.  Just in case anyone cares.

If it really turns out to be a big deal then I can make it a settable value or something later.

[WMCoolmon]

I think 65 looks better, actually. To me, 85 looks even less like D3D, it's darker with not as much shine.

[taylor]

Originally posted by WMCoolmon
I think 65 looks better, actually. To me, 85 looks even less like D3D, it's darker with not as much shine.

That screenshot just doesn't do 85 much justice.  It's still got the same amount of shine it's just more focused.  At the angle of the model it doesn't show that very well.  It still looks good in game though.  My vote is still for 65 but I'm happy either way.  I might lower it to 80 when I commit the code and change it later if the populous revolts.

[Flaser]

Could you code it so it accepts a parameter just like the ambient factor?

For all the debates about shinyness and metal/plastic/matt ships, that option would be a godsend solution enabling everyone to set it to their taste.

Just my 2 cents - WONDERFUL progress you made in this regard BTW.

[taylor]

Originally posted by Flaser
Could you code it so it accepts a parameter just like the ambient factor?

For all the debates about shinyness and metal/plastic/matt ships, that option would be a godsend solution enabling everyone to set it to their taste.

There will most likely be an option but not at first.  If an option like that were put in place then it should affect OGL and D3D equally.  I'm not familiar enough with the D3D code to start making changes which may be visually harmful.  I don't want to put something like that in just for OGL now only to have what it does change in 2 months when D3D makes use of the same option.

It's also possible that a future material and/or shader system would do a better job of setting this stuff.  I'll send Bobboau a quick message after the weekend and see what he says.  If he doesn't think it's a bad thing to do then we should be able to come up with something that works well for both OGL and D3D pretty quickly.

[Turnsky]

well, what about the fade on the ships?.. they don't fade out too well in nebulas...

it's a pity about 2-d poof not working, but them's the breaks.. at least i gets the shinies.

[taylor]

Originally posted by Turnsky
well, what about the fade on the ships?.. they don't fade out too well in nebulas...

No they don't and that kinda pisses me off whenever I see it in mission.  I want to say that's be discussed before but I don't know for sure.  I'll have to check on that one again.  It's not very high on my list of things to fix though, not being a big nebula fan.

[Turnsky]

Originally posted by taylor

No they don't and that kinda pisses me off whenever I see it in mission.  I want to say that's be discussed before but I don't know for sure.  I'll have to check on that one again.  It's not very high on my list of things to fix though, not being a big nebula fan.

i like my neb missions, only because how cool it looks when a ship comes out of the fog, particularly the sath when you first see it.

just outta curiousity.. what is on the higher levels of your to-do list?

[Taristin]

Originally posted by taylor

Is that affect better or worse?  I've set the shininess to 65 though values of 85-90 appear to match D3D better.  I made it 65 because I think it looks better but that's just my opinion.  If you'd rather have it more D3D like then let me know.
 

Honestly, I don't like them that low, but since I rarely if ever use OGL, I guess it isn't important to me.  There's no command line argument for it?

[Singh]

This is odd....im noticing very little different from the normal ambience to that of ambient_factor 75.......

I'll see if i can get screenies later...

[Singh]

nm that. another issue: I'm getting MASSIVE load times in OGL and D3D for this, especially while playing Inferno. Is this normal at all? I'm currently at the mission where the Diablo shows up and wastes everyone, but even the earlier missions load slowly. It can't be the .ibx models because the second time it loads after I die, its STILL slow.......

[kasperl]

On my dads rig, using LAN multiplayer, this builds sometimes hangs when in debrief of a multi mission. The screen goes all stripy, like two frames got mixed in some kind of "blinds" effect.  If an options screen pop ups, you get a green-blueish background instead of the acutal image. This has already been reported. It happens when you press pause during a mission, for instance. It happened on my Radeon 9800, but NOT on my brothers computer. (GF2, P4 1,2Ghz, 384MB RAM, Windows ME). I also think I saw it happen on my dads rig. (Radoen X800, AMD64 3k+, 1GB DDR, winXP home). Me and my dad ran OGL, my brother D3D and OGL. It happened on OGL nor D3D on my brothers computer.

Also on multi, even during LAN play there is some stutter for some ships. Which is odd, since all object updates were set on LAN, and it's a 100MBit network. Loading times were good here,but these systems shouldn't show any slowdown on any game, so they're useless for checking slowdowns.

[taylor]

Originally posted by Turnsky
just outta curiousity.. what is on the higher levels of your to-do list?

- Linux/OSX code merge
- working for Windows
- Mod requests (not going to elaborate)
- Official Linux and OSX releases
- cmdline pilot conversion tool to change between various pilot file versions
- fully document pilot file and campaign savefile changes since original release
- OpenGL env mapping
- Ultimate removal of DevIL dlls as a requirement for OpenGL
- more dynamic allocation of various structs
- try and cut overall memory footprint by at least 10%
- more profiling data to help fix slow points in the code
- have every bug currently assigned to me in Mantis fixed or closed
... ( goes on like that for a while )
- try and fix ship outlines and fogging in nebula
... ( I'll spare you the next page )

Originally posted by Singh
I'm getting MASSIVE load times in OGL and D3D for this

As much time as I've spent fixing slow loading it better not be slower!!  What is the official 3.6.5 like speed wise?  Compared to the 3.6.5 beta?

I would like to see those screenshots too.  There should be a deffinite difference with the various ambient factors.

Originally posted by kasperl
On my dads rig, using LAN multiplayer, this builds sometimes hangs when in debrief of a multi mission. The screen goes all stripy, like two frames got mixed in some kind of "blinds" effect

Feaky.  Does 3.6.5 do this too?  Does this only happen in OGL or does D3D show the same thing?  Does your dad's box hang only on the debrief or in mission too?

As far as the popups and stuff go it's a known problem with Radeon's but I've never been able to recreate it.  I haven't figured out what to do to fix it since everything I do will end up breaking NVIDIA in a similar way.  I'm going through ATI's docs on their website but I'll probably have to track down a Radeon to test with before I can make a fix.

For slowdown stuff let me know if you are using all of the MediaVPs.  The current set still doesn't have all of my memory conservation recomendations in it and with a few minor changes could have about 30 megs shaved off of every mission.  I'm betting that the slowdows are just memory issues with Windows hitting the pagefile too much.  Could be build releated though so I'd like to rule something out.

[kasperl]

I'm using all the VP's and stuff, but the stutter is more of a ship jumping 20m in a milisecond, like in lag, then low FPS. FPS is at a steady 120 most of the time......

It only hagned during debrief, and even then not all the time.

365 worked pretty ok on it IIRC, but heavy testing is rather hard, since my dad is somewhat picky about allowing people on his computer.

[mitac]

I just found out that I can actually fly through Sobek class corvettes with that new build, regardless of the mission. I have not yet checked other capships, but I found that worth mentioning.

[taylor]

Originally posted by mitac
I just found out that I can actually fly through Sobek class corvettes with that new build, regardless of the mission. I have not yet checked other capships, but I found that worth mentioning.

Yeah, it's something with the model.  Same problem gets mentioned in the 3.6.5 MediaVP thread too.

[Flaser]

....probably furbared bounding boxes IMHO.