Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => FS2 Open Coding - The Source Code Project (SCP) => Topic started by: Starks on April 07, 2004, 11:31:29 pm
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Ya know how during the FS2 opening, the Battle of Deneb is shown? Look at those graphics! WE ARE SO CLOSE TO MATCHING THAT!
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Yeah. I'de say my biggest complaint right now is that we're still using the low-res FS2 ship textures, but I guess that would be a huge job to replace. The shinemaps actually help to make it a little less noticable, but you can still see it.
Other than that, I agree; FS2 has made huge leaps thanks to the SCP. We're very close to cutscene quality graphics.
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We need motion blur on the ships now :p
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Call me a llama, but I say we're already past cutscene quality.
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Originally posted by Lightspeed
Call me a llama, but I say we're already past cutscene quality.
ESPECIALLY beyond the quality of the cutscenes in the freespace2 intro:p
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That said, I'm tempted to say that C&C Red Alert is past that quality ;)
In all honesty though - things are looking very cool indeed. As more ships are remodled in hi-poly varients - the textures can be upped and voila - one of the most fantastic looking space sims on the planet.
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Originally posted by Nico
We need motion blur on the ships now :p
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I've actualy thought about motion blur
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Originally posted by Bobboau
I've actualy thought about motion blur
:eek2: if you did that, you would be next to godliness.:p
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hmm....why dont we make a cutscene of the in-game SCP stuff? ;7
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May as well wait till after the code freeze, and see how Kazans coming along with the autopilot/waypoint system. With that enabled the art of making a cutscene in game would be a lot more simple since you could have the autopilot do the hard work -giving it a cinematic edge - as opposed to just having in-game footage.
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True.....but we could make an in-game cutscene anyway and send it in before 3.6 and give em something to drool about ;)
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Everyone needs to play with AA on if you want cutscene quality. ;)
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And horrible framerates. :p
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you know motion blur realy isn't that hard, I was thinking about implementing it before HTL even
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Originally posted by Raa Tor'h
And horrible framerates. :p
I run FSAA at perfectly acceptable framerates. :p I like 640*480 AA better than 1024*768, even. ;)
Really, you were capable of doing it even back then? Hmmm...
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ingame cutscenes don't need my navpoint system [which i haven't started implementing yet]
player-us-ai and waypoints
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while I can only imagine how motion blur would look, I think it would look at least decent. There is a huge amount of turning and flybys etc in FS2, and the star-swoosh effect is already partway there.
But yeah, higher poly ships with improved textuers, thats the big one.
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hell yeah - motion blur would be ub3r!!!
[i was actually stupid enough to go ahead and make a cutscene....ack]
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Originally posted by Singh
hell yeah - motion blur would be ub3r!!!
[i was actually stupid enough to go ahead and make a cutscene....ack]
eh?
we can make ingame cutscenes fine. you can let the AI take over the player, and use the waypoints for the rest. DC IIRC made something with it. either him or someone else. it looked quite nice.
btw, if we grab FRAPS or whatever, turn the HUD of, put negative time compression on to compensate for the bad framerates, and turn efffects up to gigantic levels, we ought to be able to get something nice.
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actually. you can create primitive 'camera' positions and scenes using co-ordinate manipulation. I am testing this now.
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Hey, anyone want to help me make hi-res textures?
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Originally posted by Singh
actually. you can create primitive 'camera' positions and scenes using co-ordinate manipulation. I am testing this now.
please post in the internal with results.......
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what? even with shivans? :p
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Originally posted by LLivingLarge
Ya know how during the FS2 opening, the Battle of Deneb is shown? Look at those graphics! WE ARE SO CLOSE TO MATCHING THAT!
The FS2 intro was blurry and not that well done. We are way past its graphics quality.
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What is that Dynamic Glow feature included in Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy? If someone knows, I would love to see something like that.
Players of JKA will know what I'm referring to. When its on it makes all the lights nice and...glowy...and the lava all super bright...and the Lightsabers look REAL rather than "glowsticks"...its the thing that makes JKA's screenshots so much more bright in the light department than JK2.
no im NOT talking about light coronas here, JKA's Dynamic Glow is FAR more advanced...its sorta like a cross between a light corona and an FSO Glow Map.
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how do you get the hi-poly models (downloaded from the newest everything thread, hi-poly test missions, came with model file) to work in FS2? Do they only work in a separate mission? Where can I get that mission? (file didn't include mission file?)
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JKA's dynamic glow is most likely either
a) High Dynamic Range
b) Light Blooming
High Dynamic Range is only possible on newer cards I think (full DX9 support)
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Yeah, cutscene quality is SO CLOSE. God damnit... just too close...
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Don't do Dynamic Glow.
It'll lower framerates by a huge amount, but it'll be so beautiful that you'll never want to turn it off
Trust me, I know! (runs JKA at 1024x768 with 2xAA just to get decent framerates with Dynamic Glow on)
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There was talk about installing an overexposure pass to the rendering phase but I think there were artifacting problems and it got shelved until after 3.6. Dynamic glow would probably involve upping the DX version again, something that the coders are by no means eager to do. However the overexposure effect helped a little (if it could somehow not effect the hud it'd be better, but hey) so we may see it again in the future.
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Originally posted by [BoA]_Scoob
how do you get the hi-poly models (downloaded from the newest everything thread, hi-poly test missions, came with model file) to work in FS2? Do they only work in a separate mission? Where can I get that mission? (file didn't include mission file?)
click the link under my name, and go to the SCP section for a great bit of help on FSO.
just dump the .pof in data/models and the images in data/maps
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Originally posted by Turambar
Hey, anyone want to help me make hi-res textures?
I can give you moral support. :D
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get your butt back in photoshop and give us more art!
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My butt was never in Photoshop, thank you very much. ;)
That said, I do itch for the renders again. Just got to juggle it with my growing love for my other forms of expression, guitar and photography. :)
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Originally posted by Setekh
My butt was never in Photoshop, thank you very much. ;)
Setekh and I use Ulead PhotImpact, not Photoshop.
Although now that I can afford it, I am getting Photoshop because I couldn't make satisfactory beam cannons. Setekh must use SPIRE for the fancy fireworks.
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No, the Steak uses Spire... hmm, it changed name, but can't remember the new one.
He also still has to make renders with the ott ships :p
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I'm not getting into a conversation about this again. People are better off not know how I make my renders. :p
And don't you worry Venom, I haven't forgotten :p
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Originally posted by [BoA]_Scoob
JKA's dynamic glow is most likely either
a) High Dynamic Range
b) Light Blooming
High Dynamic Range is only possible on newer cards I think (full DX9 support)
I don't know what High Dynamic Range is, but I know Light Blooming is what Deus Ex: Invisible War uses, and its a HUGE graphical improvement when used on DX:IW.
As far as Jedi Academy goes it is a similar effect but it doesnt affect the ENTIRE world lighting like DXIW, just certain dynamic light special effects like lightsabers, lava, and spacecraft lighting *HINT HINT*. The kind that DX:IW uses seems to be very different but it could be the same thing for all I know.
I'm just saying, even though it would utterly annihilate the framerate, I still think it ought to be added, just in case in the future some card comes out specifically optimized for dynamic glow effects or what-not (dynamic glow is a relatively new feature, after all, and new features generally get faster over time)...Who knows? It could happen.
And if it did...hooooooo yeah.
...but yeah to get Dynamic Glow we'll prolly need DirectX 9, not 8
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I think it may be over-exposure. I'm 99% sure it's not HDR (I have not played or seen the game, only going by your descriptions), since that requires a relatively new graphics chipset and full DX9 support. But who needs light blooming / overexposure? FSSCP doesn't have that many light sources, and we have glows for most of them already (beam glow, weapon glow, thruster glow, etc...). The only improvement would be a glow off of the reflected light on a ship's surface. I think shinemaps make it look good enough.
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It really effects glow off of glowmaps more than anything else. Right now they are all hard-edged, though the hope was to have that changed. Perhaps overexposure could be calculated from exclusively the glowmap pass? That would also prevent it from blurring out everything else.
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Overexposure? you mean overbrightening? "Overbright bits" from JKA and "Dynamic Glow" are entirely different ball games...im referring to a dynamically changing rendered HALO that completely covers certain textures, and the halos can be any color...
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Mirroring would be nice going by a ship and seeing your ship's reflection cast on the mettalic hull. Or shadows casting back upon themselves. *starts thinking of the possibility of transforming the Unreal 2 enging to a Freespace RPG* That will be the day.
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Originally posted by Setekh
I run FSAA at perfectly acceptable framerates. :p I like 640*480 AA better than 1024*768, even. ;)
Try 6x AA on 800x600 ;7
Does Freespace support Anisotropic Filtering?
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AA? how do you run that? :scared:
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Originally posted by Falcon
Does Freespace support Anisotropic Filtering?
You can force it through the graphics cards options on some cards, but it's not nearly as noticeable in a space sim as in an FPS, IMHO. :)
Depends on your graphics card, Singh. On my GeForce, I can force hardware anti-aliasing by adjusting the card's global settings from the desktop. There's also an option for AA within the SCP launcher. :nod:
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Originally posted by Setekh
You can force it through the graphics cards options on some cards, but it's not nearly as noticeable in a space sim as in an FPS, IMHO. :)
Depends on your graphics card, Singh. On my GeForce, I can force hardware anti-aliasing by adjusting the card's global settings from the desktop. There's also an option for AA within the SCP launcher. :nod:
an option in the launcher?? where??! I have a Geforce 5600 SE
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Speaking of in-game cutscenes. I have a game called "Starlancer" that's very similar to Freespace and has ingame cutscenes.
If anyone has it and knows how to hack into the programming, maybe they could see how the makers developed the scenes there and adopt the programming into Freespace 2.
But we could probably do some good ones now.
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A) everyone is very well aware of starlancer as it is only one of the very few space sims so it just seems weird how you are refering to it like it's some obscure thing
B) you have no idea how any of this stuff works do you? what you are sudjesting is that we decompile starlance and look at assembly code in order to figure out a structural feature, that's like looking at somethings DNA to try and figure out what it looks like when you could just as easily look at it and get as good if not better understanding. it's not how something is done else weare it how are we going to wedge it into our game that is the problem. think of the code as a car, if your alternater goes out in your car you can't just go out and get any replacement you need one made specificly for your car, if you just rip one out of a ford and try to jamm it into a honda your probly going to have some problems, if you ever do manage to get it to work odds are it's going to have a lot of duct tape and it's not going to be very stable. the same is true with programs, unless a bit of code is designed to work outside of a specific code base you can not simply cut and paste. I can tell you how starlancer made it's cutsceens, it had a complex camera and keyframe system integrated into it's low level object higherarchy system and spline paths and scripted events, does that help implement it into our game, no, becase we lack a means by wich to stop a game them move the veiw point (becase the veiw point in FS is basickly welded to the player object wich can't be changed easily in game) and have it follow a smoth animated path, we have however alowed for some mission hacking of the player's ship position and movement allowing mission designers to make basic cutsceenes...
C) hmmm... that came off a bit harsh, but I spent too much time typeing it to simply eraise it, I'm tired and cranky
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Originally posted by Singh
an option in the launcher?? where??! I have a Geforce 5600 SE
Right under your nose? ;)
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you mean that is antialiasing? Everytime i use it, FS2 just goes all wierd and stuff O_o
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Could be a bug at your end then? Post up some pics in a separate thread and maybe people can solve if for you :nod:
Me, I leave it off.. my card can't really cope with it.
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k......will try. What is it supposed to do anyway?
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Makes the edges of objects appear smooth, where normally they're jaggey. Well, thats the basic visual idea.
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In response to Bobboau's comment
No offense taken :D, you are correct, i know jack all about programming, but give me a few years...
However, i was not saying copy and paste programming into another, do you really think i'm that dumb (if so, you're not alone in your belief :lol: ). But i thought it could be used as an example to guide people into constructing such a system for Freespace 2. However, you seem to understand what your doing, so i'll leave it to you.
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Hey now, I already started a whole thread on that AA setting in launcher topic...
http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,22766.0.html
...you can't activate AA through the launcher even if the control panel is set to "application controlled" mode. however, if you activate AA through the NVidia control panel, you MUST ALSO set the LAUNCHER's AA setting to at least 2_SAMPLES or else FSO will screw up all the ingame fonts. Read the above link for complete details.
Singh if you haven't already started your own thread please use mine...thats what mine's for....
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Originally posted by Gregster2k
Overexposure? you mean overbrightening? "Overbright bits" from JKA and "Dynamic Glow" are entirely different ball games...im referring to a dynamically changing rendered HALO that completely covers certain textures, and the halos can be any color...
Overbright bits is NOT the same thing as overexposure. Overexposure gives a somewhat similar effect as light blooming. If we were to use overexposure for EVERYTHING, bright objects will have a glow.
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I only get the option up to 2x AA in the launcher so I just disregard using the option. I instead use a program called Radeonator. Good program if you ask me. I think they also have one for NVidia though Im not sure what it is called.