[Iluvathar]

Is anyone interested in creating support for 1st person view cockpits in ships?

(Seems not to be pain in the ass to code, and could add a bit of good realistic feeling to flight experience like in wing commander (oh i loved that game! ))

Feel free to contact me via e-mail @ [email protected]

[Petrarch of the VBB]

IIRC this has been discussed before, and most people are against the idea.

I, however, am not, and would quite like to see this feature.

[RandomTiger]

Theres load of problems with doing this but it just might work if you do it like this.

Render cockpit onto screen and into stencil buffer.
Clear z buffer and render freespace as normal (without HUD I guess) using the stencil buffer as a mask.

I think anyway.

[TrashMan]

I know Iluvathar personally, and he's a damn good programmer!

As I recall he said SUPPRT for cockpits, for the cockpits themselvs would be made by modelers.
A cockpit could be just another entry in the ships.tbl (like the one that asks for shockwave or explosions), thus making it easy to enable/disable...

[Petrarch of the VBB]

So the cockpits would actually be models (ala Starlancer) rather than just images (ala X-Wing)?

[Tiara]

I'd certainly like it if it were easily enabled/disabled. If I'd be forced to use the cockpit then I wouldn't use the cockpit addition

[Alan Bolte]

I know SWmod would probably like it, as there are a slew of models waiting to be converted that have amazing model-based cockpits. I don't think there'd be a lot of support for image-based cockpits, though. Those just kinda look bad.
One another note, in XWA, which uses model-based cockpits on every craft, there is a simple toggle for the display bound to the [.] key. Just thought I'd mention.

[Hudzy]

Originally posted by Tiara
I'd certainly like it if it were easily enabled/disabled.

Agreed.

[Nico]

Originally posted by Petrarch of the VBB
So the cockpits would actually be models (ala Starlancer) rather than just images (ala X-Wing)?

of course
images suck, and are much more difficult to do anyway.

[Petrarch of the VBB]

This will certainly be interesting.

I've just had a thought, though, would the cockpits be part of the ship model, or a separate model, that just sits infront of the player?

[Nico]

separate model

[Petrarch of the VBB]

Ahh, good. It would allow for more detail, after all.

But will they have fully functional gauges and whatnot?

[IceFire]

Yes please...separate model.  That way...if you had two ships that potentially had the same cockpit (ala TBP's Aurora variants, and Badger StarFury) you can reference a single file.  Keeps the sizes down.

[Nico]

Originally posted by Petrarch of the VBB
Ahh, good. It would allow for more detail, after all.

But will they have fully functional gauges and whatnot?

obviously not, unless there's some way to use the HUD anis as maps for the cockpit...

[phreak]

i was thinking that venom.  it would be neat if one can specify where the hud gauges go on a hud.. too bad it would require a rewrite of the hud code.

[Petrarch of the VBB]

But could the hud code be reworked, so that it is defined in a tbl, rather than being hard-coded?

[phreak]

of the hud code assumes things like position and size.  i'll have to take a look, but its 3.7 or 3.8 stuff atm

[Petrarch of the VBB]

Thank you, good sir.

[Iluvathar]

Well, I was thinking it would be a model and would be rendered conditionally. Just another camera so you folks that don't want it, just don't use it. As simple as it can be.

Well, anther thing is that models would be rendered just on the machinne using it. It would be rendered only to a player, so it wouldn't just in front of a ship model. (other players would be shocked:-))

Note: it won't be easy to implement that like implementing image cocks (u perverts it's a short word for cockpits.:-)), but it would offer many many animation possibilities.

I would like to point that TrashMan is a bit overreacting when describing me as a programmer. I'm probably good, but I'm far from "damn good" ( John Carmack is a damn good prog.- not me). Well, I know some DX OGL and cpp etc. so I can do stuff.

I would like NOone expects me to do all the work myself and to be active/available 50hrs a day. I have a job, colledge, and I'm working on a BIG VR engine project (now TrashMan would be confused:-) ... yeah yeah,... it was a secret proj. until now - lol) so I just don't have full-time available.

I appreciate your patience in reading this, but it was needed so u people can understand the topic:-).
Call it disclaimer if you want.

Stay well and healthy

[Nico]

VR engine? VR= virtual reality?