Hard Light Productions Forums
Community Projects => The FreeSpace Upgrade Project => Topic started by: TrashMan on July 01, 2006, 04:49:29 pm
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I got to say that I'm sorta dissapointed.
Before upgrading my PC I played with the ambient set to 65 and glowmaps turned on (other stuff was mostly off) and I liked it - the space seemd REAL. Dark..with ship lights the only thing you can spot at a distance.
Parts of the ship facing the sun were lit, the other side was dark and mysterious.. I liked it.
And now I play with the latest Media files and everything turned on. Specular maps are so bright I can se a warship from miles away clearly. They are lit from every side, shining bright like a friggin beacon.
Is this a glitch in the SCP3.6.9-R2 or is it supposed to be like that?
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Screenshot? I don't know if it's your personal taste or if there's somthing wrong, but I'd guess the latter rather than the former.
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I'll see if I can make some good screenshots, but you can really see it for yourself.
jsur play with specular on and look at the ship and the lighting, and then play wihtout specular.
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I'll see if I can make some good screenshots, but you can really see it for yourself.
Not if it's due to a bug on your PC we can't. :p
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I play on ambient 20, and from the 'dark side' ships are so dark as to be almost invisible on most missions. Missions with lots of lighting are different, though - should the lit surfaces be less bright?
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Well, try with the following command line parameters:
-ambient_factor 75 -spec_exp 1.0 -spec_tube 1.0 -spec_point 0.6 -spec_static 0.8 -allslev
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I'll see if I can make some good screenshots, but you can really see it for yourself.
jsur play with specular on and look at the ship and the lighting, and then play wihtout specular.
I had the opposite problem - I couldn't ****ing see anything :P
In my case, I had to jack up the Ambient, so for you maybe you need to turn it down...?
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Well, try with the following command line parameters:
-ambient_factor 75 -spec_exp 1.0 -spec_tube 1.0 -spec_point 0.6 -spec_static 0.8 -allslev
-allslev?
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:D Forgot to take that off.
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what does it do?
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Makes it possible to play all singleplayer levels from the techroom without completing the campaign that they are in.
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oh. thanks :)
didnt find an explanation for it in the wiki...
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I asked about that, seems that the reason it isn't in the Wiki is because it is akin to a cheat code.
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Thats kinda odd... given that FSwiki does have cheat pages for both FS1 and FS2
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Cheats are one thing, jumping ahead and skipping missions is totally different. You lose the storyline with allslev. With cheats you can still do entire levels one by one and know what goes on.
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I'm contemplating just getting rid of -allslev altogether and going the the same CTRL-SHIFT-S hotkey that works for ships/weapons/intel in the techroom. That way you don't have to run the game with or without all missions visible and just can toggle it while on the mission simulator screen. That also makes it more of an intentional thing too, not something that new users would turn on by mistake or without realizing exactly what it does.
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I think it's a good idea :yes:
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Well, try with the following command line parameters:
-ambient_factor 75 -spec_exp 1.0 -spec_tube 1.0 -spec_point 0.6 -spec_static 0.8 -allslev
Tried this...no effect. It's still WAY too bright. Each ship looks like it has 20 reflectors pointed at it from all angles.
b.t.w. - did anyone notice that most HTL fighters are missing INSIGNIAS????
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turn the ambient factor down.
also, i think that insignias have been borked for a looooooong time now...
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Most of the HTL fighters are indeed missing them, because when they were done the insignias looked, quite frankly, like total crap. They've since been fixed to use normal lighting but at the time they were like neon signs on the sides of ships.
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Well, try with the following command line parameters:
-ambient_factor 75 -spec_exp 1.0 -spec_tube 1.0 -spec_point 0.6 -spec_static 0.8 -allslev
Tried this...no effect. It's still WAY too bright. Each ship looks like it has 20 reflectors pointed at it from all angles.
b.t.w. - did anyone notice that most HTL fighters are missing INSIGNIAS????
Could you please post screenshots? For all we know you have some sort of error. Also tweak the settings yourself, turn it down a bit.
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Idk waht's up with specular, if you have a lightsource, it's going to reflect, and quite frankly, if you have ship with a suns light reflecting off of it, you will see it for miles on end, just like you do see planets on miles on end with a sun. But, idk, maybe for ****s and giggles it would be better if this was a bug to be fixed, idk, light sources work fine for me with the standard recommended flag settings
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I've never had a problem with specular, and I run it with essentially the same numbers that Mars does (the ambient level's been lowered to 68 in mine, though).
Still, screenshots FTW.
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turn the ambient factor down.
I tried with 20.
also, i think that insignias have been borked for a looooooong time now...
Which is terrible. I pay a lot of attention to details and each and every terran or vasudan wing in my campaign belongs to a squadron and has insignias..and every ship is nameplated.
and now half of the detail is gone... AGONY..... :(
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Dramaqueen. :rolleyes:
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well, it does suck that they're missing. How difficult is it to add those things anyway? It looks like PCS allows you to do it directly without any modeling program.
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Trashman. The simple fact is that not that many modders bother with Insignias. Based on your ships I know you do. Why not simply ask for the files and add the insignias yourself?
It's not like anyone is against having insignias or anything.
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Trashman. The simple fact is that not that many modders bother with Insignias. Based on your ships I know you do. Why not simply ask for the files and add the insignias yourself?
It's not like anyone is against having insignias or anything.
I allready imported insignia data from old [V] models into the new ones.. Didn't work entrely, since the new models are slightly different. the insignias are half-visible now..
How hard is to manuly just move the insignias (jsut their X values) a bit? I never done it so I'm not even sure what field I should be checking...
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Insignia aren't hard to do. It just takes a bit of time and effort to get all the points in the right places. Flat surfaces make them much easier too.
Trying to use the original insignia on the new models, even with adjustments, is likely to turn out quite messy. If you still want to try, in PCS you can change the offset to move the whole thing or you can adjust the individual vertices. The vertex coordinates are all relative to the offset. If you change the vertices much, you'll probably need to adjust the uv coordinates for the relevant faces as well.
Out of interest, does anyone have any comments about the insignia I did for the htl Pegasus?
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With regards to lighting, try -ambient_factor 18.5 spec_exp 18 -spec_point 0.8 -spec_static 0.8 -spec_tube 0.6 .Resembles classice Freespace 2 atmosphere, but misses some of the fancy lighting (meaning Fenrirs don't light up like Christmas trees when shot at).
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Well, this is with the average flag settings except the lighting for the laser and the beams was jacked up to max. Because quite frankly, you would be lit up like a christmas tree if you were blasted in the dark with a huge bright ass beam that had a color to it.
Though this is a deimos getting lit up, and not a fenris, good example anyway
(http://img241.imageshack.us/img241/2316/untitled14ia.jpg) (http://imageshack.us)
Wintergreen :D
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Why not just change the sttings to your own pref? :confused:
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Well, this is with the average flag settings except the lighting for the laser and the beams was jacked up to max.
How do you increase the beam/laser lighting? Is there a command line option for that, or does it involve table hackery-pockery?
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Well, this is with the average flag settings except the lighting for the laser and the beams was jacked up to max.
How do you increase the beam/laser lighting? Is there a command line option for that, or does it involve table hackery-pockery?
Isn't that spec_tube ?
Oh, and S-99, what is the maxed out value you used (default is 1.0, which can be adjusted lower. But what's the highest value you've inputed)? And is that some bloom I'm seeing?
Heck, just post the entire command line.
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exactly spec_tube should be 1.0, and spec_point which i think is for the lasers should also be 1.0. And then you'll have that.
It's really cool, because there's a ship in the dark, and it gives itself away when it fires or is fired on.
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exactly spec_tube should be 1.0, and spec_point which i think is for the lasers should also be 1.0. And then you'll have that.
It's really cool, because there's a ship in the dark, and it gives itself away when it fires or is fired on.
You get bloom effects at spec_tube and spec_point 1.0?
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Lol, no, i was using hdrish for the bloom, but without hdrish, umm, things will still look like a christmas tree. This picture was my only good example.
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Is it just me or do beams not cast light on the ship that fires them? Using these settings improves battles a great deal, but I don't get any light applied to beam-firing ships, either AAA or regular. I'm not sure the impacts cast light either. Any ideas?
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Use OpenGL instead of D3D, and dynamic lighting will look much better.
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Lol, no, i was using hdrish for the bloom, but without hdrish, umm, things will still look like a christmas tree. This picture was my only good example.
Where do I get tthis hdrish mod?
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As far as I know, hdrish is a smart shader, exclusively for ATI users.
It simulates the effects of HDR rendering (High Dynamic Range).
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Correctomundo. Hdrish is a smartshader for ati cards, but only the sm2.0 capable radeons that are dx9 compliant. Using hdrish is a real blast, but's it's not dynamic like halflife2 hdr. Hdrish does miracles for ships warping in and out and some other effects, but hdrish-lite is great for ships with normal ambient and specular light. Too bad hdrish and hdrish-lite can't really be combined.
Hdrish and hdrish-lite can be retrieved from here
http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,40726.0.html (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,40726.0.html)
On another note, my 9800pro broke when my friend snapped off a heatsink and chip on it(****er). I'm looking into getting a geforce 6600 now, it's a lot faster. Besides fs2 will still look the same with the right custom flags especially spec_tube and spec_point. I just won't have a glow shader affect.
My friend who broke my card on the other hand. We work in our own business together, and i made him pay by taking the money out of his paycheck before he got his money :lol:
BURN!!! :nod:
He looked at me all wierd wondering why he didn't make as much as i did thinking with the notion that i was going to extract the money from him later :lol:
That look on his face was priceless and funny as ****. The other thing that was priceless and funny as **** was when he ripped off the heatsink and chip to my card by holding onto it to plug in the power connector for the card. If you watched that happen in front of you like i did, i believe any of you hlp'ers would be just as amazed as i was. I wasn't mad at all, it was just some ****ing funny ****. :lol:
Sorry slightly off topic
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Cheats are one thing, jumping ahead and skipping missions is totally different. You lose the storyline with allslev. With cheats you can still do entire levels one by one and know what goes on.
Right, because having every briefing in the game in the wiki doesn't achieve the same effect.........
Which is terrible. I pay a lot of attention to details and each and every terran or vasudan wing in my campaign belongs to a squadron and has insignias..and every ship is nameplated.
and now half of the detail is gone... AGONY..... :(
It'd have to be a really **** ship to have half the detail comprised by a 256 by 256 PCX square........
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Cheats are one thing, jumping ahead and skipping missions is totally different. You lose the storyline with allslev. With cheats you can still do entire levels one by one and know what goes on.
Right, because having every briefing in the game in the wiki doesn't achieve the same effect.........
Bah. Like 80% of everyone, I never looked at the wiki. Besides which, that, too, would be actively searching for spoilers. If someone didnt know what -allslev was and used it, they may inadvertantly think that these missions are all single missions, independant of eachother.
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On thing to note about ambient lighting. If the same player files is used across builds you can occasionaly get an issue where your ambient settings no longer seem to be applied. While trying to track down another issue, I re-ran a CVS build that I previously posted as no longer _seeming_ to respond to the ambient_factor settings.
During testing for the other issue though, I created new pilots for each build I ran and on the one I reported I had normal ambinet_factor. Another test run showed this premise accurate as I ran 2 builds behind and then switched builds without creating a new pilot and wala, faded/washed out and no apparent ambient_factor applied. Created a new pilot (by deleting the old one) and I had ambient_factor as specified.
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I think Trashman's off right now... I wish he'd post screenshots instead of just complaining about somthing that could well be a minor error.
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damn, I just thought I couldn't see them :nervous: Post some pics T-man I wanna see what you've been secretly working on :P
Anyway, for mod making (if you dont have missions set in stone and ready to be linked) access to all missions is essential! I have templates made for general fighter vs fighter combat, ship visual (crash) testing or blow up test (crash on death), and full on cap battles.
It would really be a pain to not be able to just cancel a mission when objective is reached with model testing and be able to immediately go to the nest stage as I change all the relevant fields in FRED for testing at same time and run through all the missions until I hit snags.
Incidently I love being able to see a little of the "dark side" but it sure aint no beacon. He'res what settings I use:
F:\Z FS2 3.6 StarGate\fs2_open1.exe -spec -glow -nomotiondebris -nobeampierce -ambient_factor 87 -allslev
(Pic link BELOW post)
As you can see the Hatak in front of them is nearly invisible (no glow mappage yet) but you can still see it. I like the way this lighting looks at this setting.
[attachment deleted by admin]
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Screenshots? OK, in a minute.
Fury with/without specular:
(http://img107.imageshack.us/img107/3366/nospec1uy8.th.jpg) (http://img107.imageshack.us/my.php?image=nospec1uy8.jpg)
(http://img136.imageshack.us/img136/678/spec1to1.th.jpg) (http://img136.imageshack.us/my.php?image=spec1to1.jpg)
Hecate with/without specular:
(http://img135.imageshack.us/img135/1417/nospec2cy4.th.jpg) (http://img135.imageshack.us/my.php?image=nospec2cy4.jpg)
(http://img85.imageshack.us/img85/6946/spec2tm0.th.jpg) (http://img85.imageshack.us/my.php?image=spec2tm0.jpg)
With specualr turned on the ships are way too bright, and the nameplates are greyish with lines all over them.
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Something is definately wrong on your end, then...
Specular only made things darker on my system.
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Yeah, same here, for me spec on looks like the darker ones and off looks like the brighter...
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I very occassionally get ships *temporarily* being displayed briefly 'fullbright' as they are in Trashmans screens.
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I usually just reduce in-game brightness to 0.75 or 0.80 if I want the game darker.
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Call me nuts, but everyone I know runs SCP on ambient_level 20-30. It's far more effective than lowering the brightness.
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-ambient_factor .75 was in my command line settings, IIRC. Thast makes thing sufficiently moody.
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I play with ambient factor 65.
hmm...are you guys using Open GL or D3D?
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I use opengl
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OGL. DX is unsupported, really. And quite buggy.
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This is the setting I use right now, which I managed to get through dozens of experimentations and tweaking:
-ambient_factor 18.3 -spec_exp 16.7 -spec_point 0.6 -spec_static 0.9 -spec_tube 1
Nice balance of ambient "space light," laser lighting, beam turret lighting, and sunflare. Moody like the original, but with just enough added lighting complexities of SCP to make it subtle. A good example can be seen by seeing the shiney factor of the Support ship as noticable but not intrusive (Especially when looking top view). Hopes this setting will be an option for future mediaVPs.
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-ambient_factor 18.3 -spec_exp 16.7 -spec_point 0.6 -spec_static 0.9 -spec_tube 1
Good settings. I guess I'll be using them for a while.
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And what about the -fov option? What do u recommend?
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I recommend not touching it. It makes things too wonky.
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Well, there is a thread here where some guy explained how to calculate the "perfect" FOV based on the size of the screen and your distance from it. I am actually pretty happy with the result (-fov .589 in my case).
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The problem I found with small fov is that lower lods are very apparent since everything is super zoomed in.
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Well, there is a thread here where some guy explained how to calculate the "perfect" FOV based on the size of the screen and your distance from it. I am actually pretty happy with the result (-fov .589 in my case).
What's the equation?
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Well, if
D = horizontal diameter of your screen
s = distance from eyes to screen
alpha = actual angle of the screen
tan alpha =2 * D / ( 2 * s )
alpha = 2 * arctan ( D / [ 2 * s ] )
The actual -fov *.*** number is announced in radians, so if you count in degrees, you still have to convert it from degrees to radians. That's easy.
Pi =~ 3.1415926535...
360 deg = 2 * Pi radians
1 deg = Pi / 180 radians
X deg = X * Pi / 180 radians
Umm, anyway... if your calculator can be set to count in radians, you get the result directly by
2 * tan^-1 ( D / [ 2 * s ] )
If your calculator doesn't do trigonometric functions, use, say, google calculator. Type
2*atan([insert display width] / [ 2 * {insert your eyes' distance from screen} ]
in Google and let them do the calculations. Put the resulting number into the -fov flag. :D
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^^ Ugh, trigonometry class all over again :shaking:.
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Well, if
D = horizontal diameter of your screen
s = distance from eyes to screen
alpha = actual angle of the screen
tan alpha =2 * D / ( 2 * s )
alpha = 2 * arctan ( D / [ 2 * s ] )
The actual -fov *.*** number is announced in radians, so if you count in degrees, you still have to convert it from degrees to radians. That's easy.
Pi =~ 3.1415926535...
360 deg = 2 * Pi radians
1 deg = Pi / 180 radians
X deg = X * Pi / 180 radians
Umm, anyway... if your calculator can be set to count in radians, you get the result directly by
2 * tan^-1 ( D / [ 2 * s ] )
If your calculator doesn't do trigonometric functions, use, say, google calculator. Type
2*atan([insert display width] / [ 2 * {insert your eyes' distance from screen} ]
in Google and let them do the calculations. Put the resulting number into the -fov flag. :D
Is the distance in centimeters, or inches?
Say my screen is 12.1 inches, and I'm usually 9-10 inches away from the screen... -fov .672?
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Doesn't matter what the distance is messured in, so long as all messurements are in the same format. So don't do "D" in inches and "s" in centimeters.
12.1 inches? You don't mean 21.1 inches, do you? Or is this a laptop? Please tell me it's a laptop, because a 12" desktop monitor would just be wrong.
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Well, if
D = horizontal diameter of your screen
s = distance from eyes to screen
alpha = actual angle of the screen
tan alpha =2 * D / ( 2 * s )
alpha = 2 * arctan ( D / [ 2 * s ] )
The actual -fov *.*** number is announced in radians, so if you count in degrees, you still have to convert it from degrees to radians. That's easy.
Pi =~ 3.1415926535...
360 deg = 2 * Pi radians
1 deg = Pi / 180 radians
X deg = X * Pi / 180 radians
Umm, anyway... if your calculator can be set to count in radians, you get the result directly by
2 * tan^-1 ( D / [ 2 * s ] )
If your calculator doesn't do trigonometric functions, use, say, google calculator. Type
2*atan([insert display width] / [ 2 * {insert your eyes' distance from screen} ]
in Google and let them do the calculations. Put the resulting number into the -fov flag. :D
What about widescreens? My laptop's screen resolution is 1280 x 768. Selecting that resolution on the launcher leaves me with weird bugs with targeting and ships at the edge of my screen. The targeting brackets around a ship moves off the ship whenever my reticle is away from it, but it moves back around the ship when my reticle is centered off it. Suns and subspace node indicators also move wonky whenever i move around, and ships disappear from view at the edge of the screen.
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12.1 inches? You don't mean 21.1 inches, do you? Or is this a laptop? Please tell me it's a laptop, because a 12" desktop monitor would just be wrong.
It's a Tablet PC, so yeah, a laptop.
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my brother still uses a 14 inch for interfacing with his server. it only does 640x480, but in 32bit.
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...but in 32bit.
Wow... that's gettin pretty fancy
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I think it's the smallest type of crt monitor i've seen in my life for a computer. What's even more horrible is when i wanted to play my gamecube at a friends house. I had one of those really old miniature carry around black and white tv's wired up to a vcr to hook up the gamecube to play. Now with tv out on your computer, you could be going on with a 4inch crt ;)
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Which spectacular, some ships like the Aeolus and the Triton, are toooo shinny... Im some cases they looks like "transparent", no because a missing texture, its because its reflecting the background soo much.
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they should make a flag setting letting you control how much nebulas and stars reflect off of ships. Just control that intensity like with the other flags :)
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Which spectacular, some ships like the Aeolus and the Triton, are toooo shinny... Im some cases they looks like "transparent", no because a missing texture, its because its reflecting the background soo much.
I would rather say the reason is Alpha Environment mapping. Some textures still have full alpha channel, and if -alpha_env argument is used in command line, it results in that the full alpha channel becomes reflective like a mirror.
Specular lighting doesn't have (too) much to do with that. Some ships just have textures that are a bit out-dated.
Of course there might be something else wrong if you don't use alpha_env... :nervous:
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Its not supposed to be flag controlled, its supposed to be controlled by the alpha-layer of the shinemap.
If those ships are too reflective, there's either a problem with the shine-maps, or the build is reading something incorrectly. (And I doubt the latter.)
Perhaps there was an error or somesuch whilst converting the maps from its native, created format into DDS?
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That's not specular, that's envmapping. Specular deals with lighting only, not with actual reflections.
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Those ships either hadn't recieved proper environment maps or you're not using the latest up to date files in the Media Vp-s.
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It's the shinemaps alpha channels - I was unaware of env mapping when I made the maps, so obviously didn't take them into account. It has since been fixed for DaBrain's upcomming media VP release.
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It's the shinemaps alpha channels - I was unaware of env mapping when I made the maps, so obviously didn't take them into account. It has since been fixed for DaBrain's upcomming media VP release.
:D
BTW, the TC-TRI also have the same problem...
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Cooincidentaly, those are all ships that he made recently, and hence are lacking the environment layer in the shinemaps.
Wait for the newest patch.
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I have just thought a suggestion about a new feature that may help "improving the atmosphere" in new mods:
+ Now you can't get a mission without suns, you always get a default one. Would it be possible to code the use of no suns at all? In this way you could get fully pitch black missions.
What do you think about it?
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In deep space missions it would not only be nice, but even feasible and realistic. Also, if the battle takes place in a shadow of a planet or moon it would be nicer to have just weapons and explosions illuminating the scene.
It would be a good choice to have but in most missions there are stellar light sources visible, and it would be just...dumb... to not have them in them. Something else must be made IMO to get rid of problems in specular lighting. Alpha-env mapping problems will most likely be mostly gone with next MediaVP release.