Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Modding Workshop => Topic started by: nodlew on September 15, 2010, 11:08:04 pm
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Howdy folks. I've been playing Free Space for years, so I'm familiar with the SCP, and the various mods that have been produced (in production) for the game. I've been on a years-long hiatus from the game, but recently I got a hankering to blow stuff up in space again. I looked around for anything new in the Space-Sim Genre, and predictably found nothing of any interest. So I came back to FS2 and the SCP to see what you guys have been up to.
All I can say is "Wow." This game really looks fantastic now. Blue Planet War in Heaven looks to be the best-looking and best written/produced space sim mod I've ever seen. If only the voice acting was done for it...but that will come, surely.
I'm especially pleased that now it is possible to play the game with decent cockpits for the fighters. Blue Planet has cockpits for most of the stock fighters, and of course the custom cockpits for the new fighters are fantastic.
I would like to be able to tweak the existing cockpits myself. Nothing too ambitious right now--I just want to make some minor changes to get rid of the most obvious discrepencies--remove some extraneous elements, line things up correctly, etc. Maybe make a decent cockpit for the Myrmidon.
I would like some advice, info on how to do so. I have done some very basic modding for other games, but never for FreeSpace. I have everything downloaded--used the installer, so I have all of the publicly available tools.
Basic questions are:
Where do I find the cockpits that are in my game now?
What kind of files are they? What modding tool do I use to edit the image files? One big thing--one cockpit, the one that shows up for the Hercules MKII and for the Pegasus, has a small square panel. This panel has a miniaturized representation of the standard Hud printed on it. The Cockpit would work much better if I could just remove that stuff from the panel--then I could move the HUD itself around until it makes more sense visually.
Regarding the HUD--I need to make adjustments in the position of gauges. I have read the thread related to Swifty's HUD rewrite and have been trying to manipulate HUDs using the HUD gauges tbl file, but I am not getting far. I change coordinates for things and they don't change position. I try different configurations and the hud just disappears from the game.
Any information will be much appreciated.
Yours, nodlew
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Here's a post I cobbled together from a bunch of threads about cockpits.
http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=71151.0 (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=71151.0)
Towards the end of the OP is the part about the -Cockpitmod which is really useful. When you use showship you are seeing the low poly cockpit that was buildt into the model. There's a file to download that has the Terran ships from BP:AoA and Mediavps and a generic cockpit the can be used.
Once you have those then you should have a better idea how to model a cockpit. I've been working on one for the Perseus.
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Thanks rscaper,
I will check out that link right away. So the game had cockpits built into it from the start? I'll be damned. I guess they left them out because they considered them inadequate or they worried about gameplay or frame-rate issues.
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Towards the end of the OP is the part about the -Cockpitmod which is really useful.
I downloaded it, assembled the parts into a mod folder just as described, added the line in the Custom flags window in the launcher and...true to form, I get nothing, zilch in game. :(
Trying to figure out what I did wrong. It should be compatible with Mediavps_3612, right?
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I got it. The instructions didn't specifically say that the subfolders needed to be placed in a "data" folder. If you follow the instructions in the post to the letter, you end up with a problem. Got it though. I like the generic cockpit very much. Thanks for your help.
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Thanks rscaper,
I will check out that link right away. So the game had cockpits built into it from the start? I'll be damned. I guess they left them out because they considered them inadequate or they worried about gameplay or frame-rate issues.
No. Cockpits are an addition made possible by the SCP. Retail doesn't, and indeed can't, have them.
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Do the cockpits work better now? I remember trying them back in some of the earlier MediaVPs versions, with mostly bad results; viewpoint off, glass reflecting the nebulae and stuff, making it impossible to see, and so on.
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You'll have to try yourself. Personally, I don't like them.
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Do the cockpits work better now? I remember trying them back in some of the earlier MediaVPs versions, with mostly bad results; viewpoint off, glass reflecting the nebulae and stuff, making it impossible to see, and so on.
I believe the glass reflection issue has been fixed, but I'm not sure.
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I got it. The instructions didn't specifically say that the subfolders needed to be placed in a "data" folder. If you follow the instructions in the post to the letter, you end up with a problem. Got it though. I like the generic cockpit very much. Thanks for your help.
Whoops, sorry about that. I've made the change to the post. Thanks for the edit.
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I don't understand why I'm having such problems here. I'm certain I've got everything put together correctly now, but I still have a hard time getting the cockpits to show up in game. For instance--I can get the Generic Cockpit to work for, say the Herc II, but then it stops showing up for the Myrmidon. I'm just editing the tbm files with notepad. Could that be the problem?
No. Cockpits are an addition made possible by the SCP. Retail doesn't, and indeed can't, have them.
If the SCP made the cockpits, then why (and forgive any seeming impertinence on my part) given the quality of everything else it's done didn't they do a little better job? Why did it/they put that miniature non-functioning hud on the target screen of the cockpit for the HercII? And having put it there, why have they never removed it? Why didn't/haven't they made a simple cockpit for the Myrmidon? Why have none of the glitches with the cockpits AS IS been ameliorated? As far as I'm concerned, a decent cockpit is a MUST when it comes to getting immersed in the game, suspending my disbelief, getting into the experience. And I really don't ask for much. I don't require interactive buttons, or remote turrets, or even a detailed model of my pilot--just a framework that suggests the cockpit of the ship I'm in, perhaps a little reflective glass to add a touch of coolness, the suggestion of an instrument panel, and somewhere for my hud gauges to go.
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No. The problem is that the cockpit hack relies on the fighter model in question having a modelled cockpit. Not every one has one; the Myrmidon, as well as all ships that haven't been hi-polied, don't have a cockpit.
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And yet, the Generic cockpit will work with the Myrmidon--works admirably. However, sometimes it works, and sometimes it don't. If I could figure out why it works when it works and don't when it won't, then I would be golden. What I'm having to do, is keep messing with the tbm file until the ship I am currently flying has the cockpit, then as soon as I have a new ship, I'll have to fix that one to have the cockpit. It's better than no cockpit, but it's still a giant pain in the ass.
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The thing about the Myrmidon is that the pilot is basically on a motorcycle like control system inside a bubble. So you're not going to see much of a cockpit.
On the other hand if you were to model one you would have those big guns on either side when you looked. I believe Nuke has created ways to animate weapons for such a thing (or that might be wishful thinking). But still looking straight ahead in the Myrmidon would be an unobstructed view, pretty much the ideal for a fighter pilot.
I get what your saying though. I prefer having a frame of reference to make it feel as if I'm really flying the ship.
Edit: I was thinking of the Ulysses in regards to the guns but I imagine the Myrmidon has a similar control set up, you just can't see it.
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I prefer having a frame of reference to make it feel as if I'm really flying the ship.
Exactly. As for the Myrmidon, it seems to me that its cockpit would be very much like the cockpit of the Ulysses. All you would need is some bubble glass to look through, with perhaps a cross bar to correspond with the model, and an instrument panel to put the hud gauges into. The Generic Cockpit, actually, works fine, hud gauges line up pretty well and everything. I just need to figure out how to insert it into the ship model so that the ship is there around the cockpit. Oh well, lucky I have lots of time on my hands.
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Cockpits have never really been a priority for the FreeSpace Upgrade Project because retail FS2 didn't have them. I know I'd turn them off whenever possible even in mods where they were available.
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Cockpits have never really been a priority for the FreeSpace Upgrade Project because retail FS2 didn't have them.
Well, I guess I don't understand that point of view at all. All of the more ambitious mods have tried to implement cockpits. The whole point of an UPGRADE is to improve on the Retail product. I mean, I understand that cockpits could be a bone of contention--one player's idea of what constitutes a workable cockpit might be very much at odds with another, so there might be a hesitancy to tackle the cockpits from a modder's point of view. Individuals apparently pursue their own ideas along those lines while nothing is done "officially" to make tolerable in-game cockpits for the upgraded versions of the retail game.
Last night, for the first time, I cracked open a POF file using the model viewer. Tonight I figured how to switch to the model editor. Milestones. Now I need to find a modeling tutorial and I will become yet another individual individually seeking his individual solution to what is, for many people, an absolutely must have feature of the game in terms of bringing FreeSpace into the present as a playable space sim--a cockpit. Name a single decent space sim produced in remotely recent history that doesn't have a 3d cockpit view? Hell, Tie Fighter had a cockpit view--without the cockpit view, Tie Fighter would have been hugely degraded. The idea of these games is to create the sensation (a la Yorkshire Peppermint Patties) of flying a fighter in space combat. Fighters have cockpits. The cockpit is absolutely essential to creating that feel. The lack of a cockpit makes a game feel like some kind of '80s arcade game. In FreeSpace, you spend, essentially the whole game staring out of your cockpit. As such, ideally, there 1) should be cockpits; 2) they should be distinct to the individual fighters reflecting the different styles of different ships; 3) they should be detailed and pleasant to look at; 4) they should be minimally funtional (gauges should correspond with panels); 5) they should be more than minimally functional, they should (ideally) be highly functional, interactive. There should be clickable buttons for things like radar range, weapon selection, engine thrust, etc., screens should be multi-functional, bringing up sub-menu's for things like sub-system targeting, detailed damage reports and so on.
And of course, they should be optional, perhaps enabled as a separate mod so that people who didn't want them could dis-include them, and people could make their own variations to suit their own tastes. So what is needed, I suppose, is a cockpit module which lays the basic groundwork for the cockpits of all the retail ships, but with built-in provisions for customization of the cockpits themselves and of the HUD gauge layout.
The "cockpit mod" is a first step in that direction, it seems to me.
But why stop with the fighters? What's to prevent the implementation of Bridge Control interface for taking control of capital ships? The UI used in the old Starshatter Game could be taken as an inspiration.
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I agree with you on most counts, but would like to comment on the fact that those requirements are pretty ambitious. Especially the interactive, clickable part. This is because limitations in the model format of FS2_Open.
One feature that is needed before cockpits become not only useable but practical is player-controlled dynamic field of view, or in other words, adjustable zoom. At narrow field of view, not much of the cockpit is visible when looking straight ahead, making it wasteful to make the cockpit visible in the first place. If player can control the field of view as they need, this problem is diminished - when flying around or dogfighting, wide field of view can be used, and when looking at something distant, narrow field of view can be used.
Another thing that hugely improves cockpit view is head tracking. FS2_Open already supports five degrees of freedom for its TrackIR implementation, so this is only a problem in the sense that most people don't have this incredibly useful asset. I myself have a reasonably well-functioning FreeTrack rig though, and that wonderful program opens the world of DIY-head tracking to anyone who really wants to get it working.
Some of the problems you mentioned (like the opaque HUD) are not related to the cockpit support at all - they are a result of modeling the cockpits for external viewing, not internal. They were made before "show ship" flag begun to be used to show the cockpits in-game, and therefore were not designed for that. Because of that, things like HUD placement and transparency issues were simply ignored with regards to practical gameplay. In addition, many ships have ridiculously stupid cockpit construction from practical point of view. Erinyes is a particularly bad offender, but there are others as well. General visibility to the rear is also very lacking even in ships where it wouldn't need to be.
So not only do you have technical difficulties to solve (like cockpit gauges done with render-to-texture, showing actual information instead of a static texture), you have to fight the ship designs themselves to make the cockpits actually worth using.
Also, some players just think cockpits get in the way and are annoying, but as a flight sim enthusiast I have to agree with you that they do increase the feeling of immersion quite significantly, and I wish you good fortune and perseverance on your quest.
Oh, and welcome to wonderful world of modding. :)
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Thanks for your reply, Herra
and the info, co-miseration, and encouragement. Already I have figured out how to remove the incredibly offensive "mini-hud" from the Tercoc01.dds. Finding that file in the Mediavps and figuring out which tool to use to open it to copy and edit it has been a little journey in itself. Now that panel is pleasantly blank. My problem now is I am enabling the modded texture as in a separate mod folder, but in order for it to show up, I need to double its dimensions, which produces a blurry image. I don't particularly like the texture anyway and my next step will be to start creating my own hi-res replacement textures. For anyone else, in the meantime, who hates that mess on the screen as much as I do, I would be happy to make my fix available through Mediafire. I would like to be able to manipulate my Hud gauges to make things line up better, but even having read Swifty's thread and having downloaded the associated files--I'm still doing something wrong there. I'll figure it out, I guess.
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Cockpits have never really been a priority for the FreeSpace Upgrade Project because retail FS2 didn't have them.
Well, I guess I don't understand that point of view at all. All of the more ambitious mods have tried to implement cockpits.
Really? I don't remember cockpits in Beyond the Red Line, Blue Planet, The Babylon Project...I'm not sure I've ever seen a mod with cockpits released so far. Diaspora and The End Project both seem to be putting effort into them.
The whole point of an UPGRADE is to improve on the Retail product. I mean, I understand that cockpits could be a bone of contention--one player's idea of what constitutes a workable cockpit might be very much at odds with another, so there might be a hesitancy to tackle the cockpits from a modder's point of view. Individuals apparently pursue their own ideas along those lines while nothing is done "officially" to make tolerable in-game cockpits for the upgraded versions of the retail game.
Well, I have nothing against cockpits being present, and if you get them working that'd be awesome.
Last night, for the first time, I cracked open a POF file using the model viewer. Tonight I figured how to switch to the model editor. Milestones. Now I need to find a modeling tutorial and I will become yet another individual individually seeking his individual solution to what is, for many people, an absolutely must have feature of the game in terms of bringing FreeSpace into the present as a playable space sim--a cockpit. Name a single decent space sim produced in remotely recent history that doesn't have a 3d cockpit view?
Sure, FreeSpace 2. I've just never considered cockpits that important. I'm totally okay with other players wanting them, but don't try to assume that everybody shares your tastes. They come up a lot on community wish lists, but Diaspora will probably be the first mod to put a lot of effort into them.
Hell, Tie Fighter had a cockpit view--without the cockpit view, Tie Fighter would have been hugely degraded. The idea of these games is to create the sensation (a la Yorkshire Peppermint Patties) of flying a fighter in space combat. Fighters have cockpits. The cockpit is absolutely essential to creating that feel. The lack of a cockpit makes a game feel like some kind of '80s arcade game.
To you, remember. :cool:
In FreeSpace, you spend, essentially the whole game staring out of your cockpit. As such, ideally, there 1) should be cockpits; 2) they should be distinct to the individual fighters reflecting the different styles of different ships; 3) they should be detailed and pleasant to look at; 4) they should be minimally funtional (gauges should correspond with panels); 5) they should be more than minimally functional, they should (ideally) be highly functional, interactive. There should be clickable buttons for things like radar range, weapon selection, engine thrust, etc., screens should be multi-functional, bringing up sub-menu's for things like sub-system targeting, detailed damage reports and so on.
It would be awesome if you could achieve this, though I have to warn you that interactive cockpits - while doable - are a very long shot.
But why stop with the fighters? What's to prevent the implementation of Bridge Control interface for taking control of capital ships? The UI used in the old Starshatter Game could be taken as an inspiration.
War in Heaven was the first time the community's ever produced a reasonably coherent capship command mission. Go check it out, see how you'd like the interface improved.
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Really? I don't remember cockpits in Beyond the Red Line, Blue Planet, The Babylon Project...I'm not sure I've ever seen a mod with cockpits released so far. Diaspora and The End Project both seem to be putting effort into them.
I have no wish to enter into a pointless polemic. However, Btrl had cockpits if I have not gone completely insane. BluePlanet2 has great cockpits and they add immeasurably to the Wow factor of that mod. I'm playing BPAOA right now--all of the ships have some kind of cockpit--enabled via TBM file. The Babylon Project is ancient history. I bet they would have done cockpits if they could. You know what would be great way to keep that great mod relevant and re-playable? Add COCKPITS!
FS2 was not released in remotely recent history--FS2 was released in Pre-History, when Dinosaurs ruled the Earth.
Yes, to me. This is my thread, it necessarily includes my opinions and my wants and wishes for the game and it began as an appeal for help so that I could begin the process of working out my own means of accomplishing those ends. I'm not just grousing here.
That's enough. Anti-cockpit opinion would be better expressed elsewhere. I would rather discuss the details of making cockpits and the challenges thereof than explore the motives behind your ambivalence regarding cockpits.
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Really? I don't remember cockpits in Beyond the Red Line, Blue Planet, The Babylon Project...I'm not sure I've ever seen a mod with cockpits released so far. Diaspora and The End Project both seem to be putting effort into them
I have no wish to enter into a pointless polemic. However, Btrl had cockpits if I have not gone completely insane. BluePlanet2 has great cockpits and they add immeasurably to the Wow factor of that mod. I'm playing BPAOA right now--all of the ships have some kind of cockpit--enabled via TBM file. The Babylon Project is ancient history. I bet they would have done cockpits if they could. You know what would be great way to keep that great mod relevant and re-playable? Add COCKPITS!
The cockpits you're talking about are simply the ones modeled into the ships. Ideally we could get something a lot better, maybe even interactive.
Unless I'm mistaken Blue Planet 2's cockpits are a decent example of how not to do them, since their texture count is very high. They could use redesign and optimization.
FS2 was not released in remotely recent history--FS2 was released in Pre-History, when Dinosaurs ruled the Earth.
Yes, to me. This is my thread, it necessarily includes my opinions and my wants and wishes for the game and it began as an appeal for help so that I could begin the process of working out my own means of accomplishing those ends. I'm not just grousing here.
That's enough. Anti-cockpit opinion would be better expressed elsewhere. I would rather discuss the details of making cockpits and the challenges thereof than explore the motives behind your ambivalence regarding cockpits.
Well that's interesting, I could've sworn that I said I had nothing against cockpits and that it'd be great if you could achieve your goals. Maybe you misread my post?
I think the best attitude for you to take would be one of conciliatory understanding - don't blame FSO or the FreeSpace Upgrade Project for the lack of functioning cockpits, just work towards achieving them. Lashing out at them for not providing a feature you want is less productive than helping work towards that feature.
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Unless I'm mistaken Blue Planet 2's cockpits are a decent example of how not to do them, since their texture count is very high. They could use redesign and optimization.
Yes. Those cool cockpits are a massive ressource hog, because they're rendered for every ship of that class on screen. There are better ways to do them, most of which involve this ships.tbl setting (http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Ships.tbl#.24Cockpit_POF_file:).
Now, let me clarify a bit of FSU policy here. One of the reasons why working cockpits are not a priority for us is that FSU is committed to preserving the retail gameplay experience. Visible cockpits are not a part of that. If a modder wants to add them, or make them visible, that's his or her prerogative, but it's not a priority for us.
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I have not lashed out at anyone, but I am on the verge of lashing out at you. If you require for me to kiss your ass to get you to leave me the *uck alone, then by all means I am puckering up. If I have in some way offended you, then by all means, I take it back. OK?
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I am very sorry if I have caused offense. I was simply trying to clarify FSU's position on this issue, I did not want to cause anyone to lash out.
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As far as the resource hog factor goes--I have a very modest computer, Core2 Duo, GeForce 9800. It runs BP2 without a hitch. I'm sure the polys in the BP2 cockpits could be reduced, but the visual effect is, in my opinion, spectacular. Not to mention the amazing animations incorporated into the ship designs. The fact that such things could be accomplished is jaw-dropping.
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I too am sorry. Peace.
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Oh, there's no doubt about how awesome it looks. But here's the problem. At the moment, I think those cockpits use textures in the 512^2 to 1024^2 category, while accounting for several hundreds of LOD0 polygons. Actually, let me pull up the correct stats.
For the Uriel gunship (wraith.pof), for example, the cockpit has 2289 polygons, and it uses 4 1024^2 and 1 512^2 diffuse texture. All of these have glow, and some even have normal maps. Meaning we are talking about around 10 MB of video memory for these cockpits alone.
Now, the problem is that these cockpits are rendered whenever LOD0 of that ship is visible. Due to the way the FSO engine is set up, this incurs a disproportionally high cost in terms of ressources.
Now, if Steve-O had done the smart thing and used the ships.tbl option I linked to above, that cockpit model would only have to be rendered once, for the player. As it is, they need to be rendered or at least processed for ships that, in most cases, won't ever be close enough for you to see those cockpits.
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I have not lashed out at anyone, but I am on the verge of lashing out at you. If you require for me to kiss your ass to get you to leave me the *uck alone, then by all means I am puckering up. If I have in some way offended you, then by all means, I take it back. OK?
Calm down. You are acting very un-Dudelike. If stating that I think you achieving your goals would be awesome somehow qualifies as 'not leaving you alone', then color me bemused. :p
Now as The_E pointed out, the issue with in-model cockpits like those used in BP2 is that the FSOpen rendering engine is very misguided. The big problem is not actually the polycount in the cockpit but the texture count. It's good that you can run BP2 without a hitch, but most people can't, and one of the reasons for that is these damn cockpits being rendered in every ship in the frame.
Hopefully what we can do is set up an independent cockpit model that is rendered only for the player. I believe there is code-side support for this right now but I'm not totally sure how to implement it (as I am an enormous nooblet when it comes to modeling and rendering-related issues.) If we did this, though, we could have much more detailed cockpits that didn't cause performance hangups.
Cockpit interactivity has been demoed by Nuke. I'm not entirely sure how reliable it is right now, though.
In the meantime Diaspora has some pretty gorgeous cockpits that you can check out on their preview videos.
EDIT: the ships.tbl option The_E has mentioned is what I was talking about above, and what cockpits should use.
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Now, if Steve-O had done the smart thing and used the ships.tbl option I linked to above, that cockpit model would only have to be rendered once, for the player. As it is, they need to be rendered or at least processed for ships that, in most cases, won't ever be close enough for you to see those cockpits.
OK, I get that. And that is very useful information to me--it corrects my thinking on how to approach making my own cockpits.
Forgive my insufficiency of Dudeness, I am tired. No, I don't know very much about these issues or the challenges they involve when it comes to modding FreeSpace. My opinions regarding the importance of cockpits are just that--opinions which reflect my own expectations when playing a simulation. The lack of cockpits has always been my first and almost my only real beef with Freespace and you will forgive some surprise on my part that little effort seems to have been made to remedy the situation. But I have tried my hand at 3d modeling in the past, and since it demonstrably can be done, I'm just the sort of obsessive person to dedicate a few months of my life to doing it myself.
But I will give myself this little bit of credit--in a matter of a few hours I have managed to remove the "mini-HUD" from the target panel in the Terran Cockpits as available now. For those of us for whom the cockpit view is essential, that is a major improvement. Think what I might accomplish if I knew what I was doing?
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The GenericCp.pof is an excellent example of how it should be done. Open that up with PCS2 and check out how it's put together. Only what the player sees is necessary so you can get pretty detailed. For other specific ship cockpits you would take the design elements of the ship that the player can see and incorporate them. For instance if you use the showship way with the Perseus the modeled gunsite is way below where the targeting reticule is. I've been working at modeling a cockpit that looks like you are sitting in a Perseus but with everything where it should be and making sure to create enough HUD space for when it becomes possible to display the gauges there. I just started learning this stuff so it's been slow going. My first few models ended up being full of rat nests and holes but I think I'm starting to get the hang of it.
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The GenericCp.pof is an excellent example of how it should be done.
Yep, I realized that right away and I've examined the file in the viewer. Do you know, rscaper, what software was likely to have been used to produce it? What tools are you using? How do the texture maps get applied to the models?
The Generic Cockpit works perfectly as a Generic Cockpit. I was thinking that in order to make ship specific cockpits one way would be to borrow any elements of the ship model that would be visible from the cockpit interior, incorporate a cockpit with those elements along with a much better rendered pilot, and texture the whole thing with textures that don't look like something chucked up by a sick cat. Visible Canopy elements might need to be replaced with more detailed versions. Since the Myrmidon has no cockpit at all, I was thinking of beginning my efforts there. Also, I've been thinking that the Rear View should be a "Camera View" of the Rear of the ship, if such a thing is possible. Given the way the views seem to work in-game, I suppose the cockpit model will have to incorporate a rear camera "Window" to look through. Hmmm, makes me think. A portion of the rear of the model needs to be included so that one sees the important bits while looking at the "Rear View Camera".
...with everything where it should be and making sure to create enough HUD space for when it becomes possible to display the gauges there
Ah. So the Hud configuration isn't ready yet. That explains a few things.
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To create models for FSO, you need to strt with a 3d modelling app, like Blender, 3DS Max, Wings, or others. It's also where you need to do the necessary UV-Mapping (which is the process where textures get assigned to specific surfaces), then export that model to Collada 1.4.1, and import that into PCS2 to turn it into a pof file that the game can read.
There are several links to tutorials hidden here: http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=70249.0
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Thanks, E.
Checking the links now.
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While FSO is amazing, when dealing with the model format and such, there's times when it becomes painfully obvious that we're dealing with an 11 year old engine, no matter how well it gets upgraded. :pimp:
For me, like Battuta said, I am a fan of not having anything obstruct my field of view while flying the ships but that is because it is my preference.
I would love to see cockpits done well but there needs to be a massive overhaul of the source code if you want something like dynamic textures for gauges that show information being mapped to the model. For the FSU team, there would be no point in doing these hi-poly cockpits for each ship at least until that code could be implemented, since you would have to remake everything from scratch to be compatible with the new code.
I'm not sure if FSO will add support for dynamic textures, especially since they decided not to move forward with the damage decal code.
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Render-to-texture support for HUD gauges is closer than you think. That's quite a different beast from damage decals.
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Oh REALLY? :eek2:
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Render-to-texture support for HUD gauges is closer than you think. That's quite a different beast from damage decals.
Most Excellent :nod: