Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: Uninvited on December 16, 2006, 12:15:32 am
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What does it mean?
Also, is there any way to disable the universe reflections off of ships? (stars, nebula)
Thanks.
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Motion debris are those little blobs that rush past your ship when you move so that it gives you a greater impression of movement. If you turn it off they won't be there, and space will look much clearer (IMO), but movement won't be as obvious.
As for the reflections... why do you want to turn those off? They look cool. :p
Well, if you want them off: I believe its the environment mapping option.
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The reflections are cool, but it's a matter of realism.
They reflect the stars so perfectly, nebula's are clear in them too. It's like every ship was spit shined before sent into battle. As well if they're painted, I wouldn't think they'd reflect so well.
Thanks for the reply about motion debris, I'll try it on and off.
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The reflections are cool, but it's a matter of realism.
They reflect the stars so perfectly, nebula's are clear in them too. It's like every ship was spit shined before sent into battle. As well if they're painted, I wouldn't think they'd reflect so well.
Thanks for the reply about motion debris, I'll try it on and off.
What do you think the pilots do between missions? :p
Anyway, the problem is this. The textures in ships have a component called "shine map". This layer (actually it's a separate file but handles in the game like a layer anyway) is a grayscale texture that was originally used for specular lighting, ie. direct sunlight reflections. The brighter the shinemap, the more that region of model will reflect. Cockpit glass is completely white on shinemaps, while non-reflective parts like matt black, smoketrailed engine cowlings would be completely black. Cool.
Later, environmental mapping was released, and even later, alpha environmental mapping. Alpha env mapping means that the environmental reflection's intensity is defined by alpha channel in textures, not just how bright the shinemap is at that point. This has many advantages, the main one being that alpha channel is basically equal to transparency. If I've understood correctly, it enables the reflections and the actual texture to be seen more clearly.
But, there's a hitch. The shinemaps were made for specular lighting, and they were not made originally to handle alpha env mapping at all. That's why the makers didn't pay any attention to alpha channel values, or if the texture even had alpha channel. Retail used completely green textures for transparency. I'm not completely clear on this subject - either the game interprets textures with no alpha channel to have completely black alpha channel, or they interpret it as completely bright 100% intensity alpha channel. I don't remember which one it was, but the main thing is that some of older textures are incompatible with new features. They will eventually be fixed.
You could try ticking off the Use Alpha for env mapping -box in launcher. Or if it's not satisfactory, untick the env mapping entirely.
One last question... Are you using OpenGL renderer? I'm asking because OGL env mapping works much better than DirectX version of it. You should use OpenGL anyway. It works better, usually.
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Yeah I'm using OpenGL.
I think it's an awesome feature- I just found it unfortunate that it had been applied to all textures as opposed to just ones that would actually be reflective.
I'm not all torn up about it though. It looks cool enough on the ships, it's just sometime I get the urge to check my hair in the Orf's communication array. :)
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It should hopefully be fixed in the 3.6.9 Official VPs with luck.
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Yeah, the Leviathans are notoriously shiny. There are also some other ships like Triton, some cargo containers, Hippocrates and stuff like that is very... shiny.
I still prefer to have it on, even if some ships look a bit off.
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I played again and now that it's fresh in my mind, I know why I don't like it. It looks as if you're seeing through the ship at the stars behind it.