[Nuke]

there are many different ways to implement virtual cockpits. i personally like the way that microsoft does it in its flight simulators. they simply include the interior of the aircaft in the model and view from inside where the pilot should sit. anyway the things we need include.

the ability to see your own model using the normal hud view. when in that position freespace does not draw any geometry for your own ship's model. make freespace do this.

second, alow for model transparency. this can eighter be accomplished through the textures, or specify a subobject to be transparent. this is for the windows, so the texture based transparency would be better. we need it to look like a window without being a visual henderance.

and the last thing, be able to overlay the hud onto a polygonal mesh. it would be its own subobject and would be textured with what is nomilly laid over the whole screen. this also gets rid of the need to have different sets of hud graphics to jack up resolutions.

you then model a ship with an interior, a canopy and a hud. improve the look around code and you got virtual cockpits. another cool idea, make the canopy a subsystem so you can shoot it off and space the pilot then have a happy little blood splatter effect.  

[##UnknownPlayer##]

Alternately we just draw the geometry over the top of the normal displays and render the hud bits on to that. No model modifications, its just a locally rendered bit.

[aldo_14]

I think you could get away with pretending the games HUD stuff is displayed on the pilots helmet screen..... for ease of use or summat.  Or projected directly onto the retina.

Especially as all the stuff you see in the game is from the wee 'glass' bit at the fron of the cockpit.

[Nuke]

isn't there some fancy gl function to render the hud to a texture in memory instead of directly to the screen. then render that texture onto a plygonal object and just use freespace's additive tranparency effect (same as what is used to render thruster plumes). the same transparency could also render the cockpit windows, using straight '0 0 0' rgb values in the middle and then just have the white in the areas where the specular stuff should be.

[Fozzy]

how would you change the brightness/color according what angle you are to any light sources. (sun, lasers, thrusters)

[Killfrenzy]

You're after the 'Starlancer Effect' aren't you?

[Nuke]

Originally posted by Fozzy
how would you change the brightness/color according what angle you are to any light sources. (sun, lasers, thrusters)

two words, pixel shaders!
they got em into classic quake, im sure you freespace people out there have more brains than any crack quake coder.

and starlancer, i cant find that game anywhere, i played the demo, i liked, but nothing on the shelf, nothing on the warez sites (i do not condone piracy, piracy is bad), and im not going anywhere near microsoft.com to order it (i do not condone microsoft, microsoft is bad).

really i was thinking more along the lines of cfs2, all the gauges work, and you can look around, padlock your enemy and see your damage.

[ShadowWolf_IH]

if quake has it we can get it.  I was speaking with the founder of mektek about a month ago, and the quake source code has been released.

[Nuke]

um... duh! its been out for some time now. many of those working on the quake engine have implemented pixel shaders. pixel shaders were never an original part of quake, they were added in eventually. i mod under one of the new quake engines, but i still dont have any luck getting models into that game.

[##UnknownPlayer##]

When we get the DX8 graphics done pixel shaders shouldn't be a problem for anyone in the know with them.

[Nuke]

pixel shaders in quake were all implemented through opengl. im not too sure how good they would be under dx8. can anyone tell me how transparency is to be implemented? will it be through alpha channel or by polygon.

[##UnknownPlayer##]

Anyway you want. DX8 has very good support for pixel shaders and the like, and if your hardware supports it then it runs very fast too.

[Nuke]

i think alpha chanel is more versitile, but i can think of situations where polygon by polygon woud be beter. impliment both if possible. i also want reflective things too. if anyone wants to work on a system for virtual cockpits, i will model the interior for one of my ships for testing purposes.

[15thRampage]

Originally posted by Nuke


two words, pixel shaders!
they got em into classic quake, im sure you freespace people out there have more brains than any crack quake coder.

and starlancer, i cant find that game anywhere, i played the demo, i liked, but nothing on the shelf, nothing on the warez sites (i do not condone piracy, piracy is bad), and im not going anywhere near microsoft.com to order it (i do not condone microsoft, microsoft is bad).

really i was thinking more along the lines of cfs2, all the gauges work, and you can look around, padlock your enemy and see your damage.

go to ebay, you will find it there