[The E]

Indeed. Light strength is defined through the light colour.

does this mean missile explosions and flak will now have lighting turned on for them? Diaspora flak field would look amazing with this...

Not sure what you mean here. If you're asking whether particles now react to lighting (as demonstrated in Battlefield 3's Frostbite engine), the answer is very definitely no.

[MatthTheGeek]

I think he meant whether missile and flak explosions will produce light. They currently don't.

[The E]

Well, in that case the answer is still "no, not at the moment". Right now, getting it to work correctly has to have priority over adding tons of new features.

EDIT:

MattThegeek has been hard at work turning the glowpoints on BP ships into light sources. This allows me to show off what this looks like.

Without lighting from glowpoints:


With lighting from glowpoints:

[Nuke]

any chance at light emissions from glowmaps?

[Swifty]

That would require image-based lighting so no, not yet.

[Valathil]

Ok i converted the distortion rendering to do the depth test in the shader which should fix all ATI artifacts once and for all. I HOPE.

http://www.mediafire.com/?4po5m9n3pf0zdah

[Alan Bolte]

Played around with it. Modded a Fenris's glows. Didn't see any problems, though I'm not sure what I was looking for beside animated glows throwing light.

ATI Radeon HD 4650

[Valathil]

Well glowpoint lights are the only real new "feature" thing. There is not much visual difference in the game from the change. Actually that was the point. It's just that it works around the 8 light per ship limit that we had before. Theoretically there could be 256 lightsources near one ship and they would all be visible.

[Nighteyes]

Played around with it. Modded a Fenris's glows. Didn't see any problems, though I'm not sure what I was looking for beside animated glows throwing light.

ATI Radeon HD 4650

just wait until they will enable lights on engine glows, missiles and flak explosions, and mods will start to light up their hangar bays with real lights(and shadows at one point) 

*btw I just noticed the launcher flag of "apply lighting to missiles" doesn't actually do anything...

*funny little thing I noticed, the image with deferred lighting on has a higher FPS than the one without

[MatthTheGeek]

just wait until [...] mods will start to light up their hangar bays with real lights

Done that on BP ships. Works like a charm.

btw I just noticed the launcher flag of "apply lighting to missiles" doesn't actually do anything...

I think it applies lighting to missiles. Which means missiles will receive light, not that they will emit light.

[The E]

*funny little thing I noticed, the image with deferred lighting on has a higher FPS than the one without

Both images were taken on the same run, seconds apart. FPS fluctuations are not really relevant there.

[Commander Zane]

Does that mean you activated the feature in-game?

*btw I just noticed the launcher flag of "apply lighting to missiles" doesn't actually do anything...

I thought this added that lens flare-looking effect to the missiles when they go farther away from your view.

[The E]

No. I cheated and waited until the glowpoints were off, then took a screenshot. Those pics were meant to illustrate the differences (sometimes subtle, as on the Narayana, sometimes obvious, like on the Uriel) in appearance this stuff makes.

[Nighteyes]

*funny little thing I noticed, the image with deferred lighting on has a higher FPS than the one without

Both images were taken on the same run, seconds apart. FPS fluctuations are not really relevant there.

well anyway its great to see this doesn't really affect FPS much if at all...

[Valathil]

One thing i notice now that i think about it. The "apply lighting to missiles" flag is practically obsolete now cause lighting WILL get applied no matter what because they are solid polygons and therefore fall into the deferred pipeline. Only thing that would change is the application of static lights (suns).

[mjn.mixael]

depreciate another commandline flag FTW!

[Valathil]

deprecate u mean.

Also thinking about spotlights and stuff. Easy Easy Easy. BUUUUUT... i do not know a good way how modelers would like to define them. I mean there's a lot of parameters to consider like spot direction and size, Is it rotating? If yes then how fast etc. I could just do it like before in the props edit field and maybe do direction by defining another glowpoint or something and linking that as a target but really i'd like to hear how modelers would think what the best way would be to define that stuff. DISCUSS!

[Nuke]

i tend to prefer solutions that do not involve model editing, but thats just me. on the other hand the glow points system already has places for relevant data, and then there is the possibility to define the points in the modeling program. just get whoever codes pcs2 these days to make that props line a props box.

[The E]

Personally, I believe the best solution to be to use a modelled, invisible-textured, noncollideable subobject. The light source would be the subobjects' centerpoint, with model properties being used to define light colour and attenuation.

[MatthTheGeek]

Submodel centerpoint is probably not a good idea. Let's say you want to make a cone of light, you don't want your light source to be the center of the mesh, but rather the top of the cone.

Otherwise the idea is good. That way you can do whatever shape you want to accommodate the particularities of your ship. It's obviously harder to set up than glowpoint lights, but it's a much more elaborate effect so it's normal. And it's not any more difficulty to set up than modeled thrusters anyway.