[aldo_14]

Just a thought..... FS2 zbuffers both the game engine and the cockpit hud anis together, doesn't it?  

Would it be possible to insert a seperate 'layer' (such as it is) to show a cokpit bitmap or even model, inbetween the hud polygons & actual space 'scene' layers?

[Unknown Target]

Please oh please oh please oh please....

[aldo_14]

?

[Fineus]

I think he either likes the idea (I'm with that) or he doesn't think it's possible.

[aldo_14]

It's the latter i'm concerned about.  As in 'oh please, how could you be so bloody daft!?'

[kasperl]

well, you could try to just model it and place the viewpoint of the player somewhere funny. not sure if it would work though

[aldo_14]

Nah - that's not what i mean.  what i mean, is somewhat akin to the way the game renders the hud ani's - AFAIK, they''re actually a flat, fully lit polygon which would be on the bottom of the zbuffer stack.  What I'm thinking, is whether you could create a layer just before that, to place some form of cockpit bitmap or animation there (but which is not visible from external cameras, etc)... um, it's sort of tough to describe, actually.  

I guess the basic summary is - creating a special layer in the z-buffer which fits inbetween the last 'external' buffer (the closest polys 'outside' the ship), but before the stack layer with the hud ani's.  Thogh, now i think of it, would you have to z-buffer the cockpit model if you did?  i mean, there wouldn;t be any overlapping polys, but I guess the projection could throw up some anomlies..... damn, I really need to try this out for myself somehow......

[kasperl]

i think that i get what you mean, but really, what is the problem with doing it all with the model itself?

[aldo_14]

It'd be wierd..... i mean, if I understand you right, you're suggesting treating it as an ingame model(?) - the only way I can think of, would be to make it for use in chase cam.  But i'm not sure that could work, because IIRC the chase camera isn;t tightly looked to the rear of the ship and soforth.

Plus this sort of thing is more naturally a programming problem, IMO.

[kasperl]

what i mean is doing this:

make the ship, and have the cockpit normally covered with a one sided texture, and put your cockpit thingy's inside that. so thatfrom the outside it looks black, and from the inside you se all the things from the cockpit. and then you put the viewpoint for the player in the right place.
now, i am thinking this up as i write, and i only used modelview to look at pof's, so i might be very wrong abouy how FS2 handles viewpoints and one sided textures.

[aldo_14]

That's been mooted before, but the problem is that FS doesn;t render any of the player ship when you're inside it, regardless of which way the poly's face.

[kasperl]

a, that explains.

[Sticks]

I was actually thinking about doing this. It really shouldn't be that hard at all, at least in a basic implementation.

[Falcon]

It can work two ways, view the cockpit zoom out view the ship.
Just a thought.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Sticks
I was actually thinking about doing this. It really shouldn't be that hard at all, at least in a basic implementation.

I'd like to, just to make a point of trying to get my arse in gear and actually learn some code.  Problem is that I'm still waiting on the yoonie releasing the VStudio cds..........incidentally, the idea came from how you described that 'overburn' effect working.  Made me think a bit about how the zbuffer could be exploited.

Maybe you could sort of create a seperate module / object responsible handling the cockpit code, so you could easily partition it (i.e. to start with a simple bitmap then move to an actual model with refinements or direct inheritance/extension), or even just to make it simple to turn on & off.  IMO the main problem *could* be the free look thing (shift + '.' I think).  

Wonder if the pof-viewing code for the actual hud could be utuilkised in some way?

[Lightspeed]

dont do it as a model. bitmaps can be VERY detailed and dont slow the game down. If you could rearrange things (radar, targetting box) via table entries you could even specify different cockpits for ship classes and give them that "unique" touch

[Kazan]

it would be much easier to to it as a bitmap than as a model - and the game performance hit would be less - and it would be easier to "turn the cockpit off"

[J3Vr6]

Sounds like a good idea, I like it.  I especially like Lightspeed's idea on it, with different ships being able to have different inside-cockpits.  I'm not sure if you guys can move the actual "guages" cuz I thought they were hard-coded, but having different setups for different ships would rock.

[Drew]

so itl be kinda like the cockpit veiw in rouge squadron?
das schweet

[Sticks]

lol

Rouge Squadron