Hard Light Productions Forums

Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => FS2 Open Coding - The Source Code Project (SCP) => Topic started by: Boct1584 on May 06, 2002, 06:24:53 pm

Title: 800x600
Post by: Boct1584 on May 06, 2002, 06:24:53 pm
Is there a way to modify the source code to support 800x600? I don't know much about it (the source code), but 800x600 would be a good idea, methinks.
Title: 800x600
Post by: phreak on May 06, 2002, 07:10:39 pm
There is a way, but with the new graphics cards coming out, they would prefer 1280x960 or 1600x1200 support.
Title: 800x600
Post by: EdrickV on May 06, 2002, 08:00:06 pm
Not everyone has a couple hundred dollars to spend on brand new "top of the line" graphics cards that will be old news in 6 months. I'm still using a Voodoo 3 2000 PCI. I wouldn't mind 800x600 support, but higher then 1024x768 (which I haven't even used) would be too much.
Title: 800x600
Post by: LtNarol on May 06, 2002, 08:36:55 pm
i dont have enough for anything better than my 16bit 3d accellerator, keep the 640*480, i cant take anything higher for the love of god.
Title: Re: 800x600
Post by: penguin on May 06, 2002, 09:11:25 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Boct1584
Is there a way to modify the source code to support 800x600? I don't know much about it (the source code), but 800x600 would be a good idea, methinks.

From a code point of view the changes would probably be trivial.

The difficulty would be the hundred-or-so graphics that make up the UI screens the HUD, etc. which are all either 640x480 or 1024x786.  Open up sparky-hi.vp in VPViewer -- each of those files would have to be converted to the different resolution.  You could scale it in Gimp or Photoshop or whatever your drawing program of choice is, but it would probably look pretty crappy.

It doesn't matter if it's 800x600 or 1600x1200 -- lotsa new images would need to be created.
Title: 800x600
Post by: Capt. Llamatron on May 06, 2002, 09:19:31 pm
There's a reason there's not 800x600 in there already, and its not necessarily because all the interface would need to be redone to support a new res. There's not much difference in 640x480 and 800x600. I can almost 100% guarantee that if someone spent the time to get this in there, noone would notice any difference.

Its just not worth the time, IMO. The time could be better spent adding cool stuff :)
Title: 800x600
Post by: CptWhite on May 07, 2002, 12:48:37 am
im sorry but there is no reason to have anything less than a tnt2 ultra these days, (which i think run better than geforce 2 mx) you can pick one up for around £30/$45//50 euro

hell i can see a geforce 3 ti200 for £95 - not a rediculous price
Title: 800x600
Post by: Bobboau on May 07, 2002, 01:15:48 am
I have a 8mb S3 Savage 4  ;7
Title: 800x600
Post by: CP5670 on May 07, 2002, 03:05:21 am
Have it so that the menu displays and the game itself do not run on the same renderer. If this is done, the menu can be locked in 1024x768 or something while the ingame resolution can easily be changed to anything else. This would also fix some of the graphical bugs we FSAA users notice. ;)
Title: 800x600
Post by: ##UnknownPlayer## on May 07, 2002, 07:28:32 am
I believe it is already done this way, otherwise I see no reason why the graphics engine couldn't treat the interface like a texture and scale it.
Title: 800x600
Post by: Fineus on May 07, 2002, 07:48:14 am
It should be fairly easy to downscale the 1024x768 graphics to 800x600... it'd take time but if you could get the engine to support it it'd probably be worth it.

That said, it might be a better idea to completely re-do the graphics for the game in 1600x1200 then downscale them to the lower resolutions - which would be a lot more impressive in the long run.
Title: 800x600
Post by: LtNarol on May 07, 2002, 07:52:19 am
if you're so bent on having such high resolutions, then make it an option that can be changed in the options menu.  I for one dont have money for anything more advanced than a 16bit card, this sucker costed me $32 and thats as cheap as they come down here, that TNT2 you were talking about is somewhere around $200, thats about $195 more than my current savings, i'll pass thank you very much.
Title: 800x600
Post by: KARMA on May 07, 2002, 09:23:11 am
Quote
Originally posted by Thunder
It should be fairly easy to downscale the 1024x768 graphics to 800x600... it'd take time but if you could get the engine to support it it'd probably be worth it.

That said, it might be a better idea to completely re-do the graphics for the game in 1600x1200 then downscale them to the lower resolutions - which would be a lot more impressive in the long run.


thats right, if you want to create 8*600 graphics scaling the original files the result will not be crappy, since you can start from higher resolutions (1024*768), they will look better than the original 640*480 due to the higher res....

the problem would be to create completely new graphic for resolutions higher than 1024.

probably the best way (but i don't know if possible or if it will decrease hardware performance ) would be to create graphic art for highest res possible and to have an engine that automatically downscale the pcx's
Title: 800x600
Post by: Boct1584 on May 07, 2002, 11:13:10 am
Sounds good to me. I'd help but I have NO skill at this kind of thing.
Title: 800x600
Post by: penguin on May 08, 2002, 09:23:30 pm
Another advantage to doing "our own" images -- not just for the HUD, but for the whole MenuUI thing (barracks, main hall, etc.) is that we would be another step closer to a complete package -- one where you don't need any of the original *.VP files.

Hmmm... new user interface, new mods, new missions & campaigns... sounds like FS3 to me...

(:shaking: penguin awaits the inevitable hammers and goats that appear at the mention of FS3 :shaking: )
Title: 800x600
Post by: EdrickV on May 08, 2002, 09:40:23 pm
Just a little note: You can replace the interface screens like the main hall and stuff. The Robotech MOD partially replaces the main hall screen (with a nice VF flyby) and has modified versions of most of the other screens as well. Changing the coordinates for the "doors" and the help overlay is quite a bit more complex, but all of that can be done without source editing I think. Adding new things you can do (like a MOD manager) is different though. As is adding support for 800x600 and other resolutions. That stuff is hardcoded. (As I'm sure you already know.)
Title: 800x600
Post by: penguin on May 08, 2002, 10:06:41 pm
Quote
Originally posted by EdrickV
... As is adding support for 800x600 and other resolutions. That stuff is hardcoded. (As I'm sure you already know.)
Yeah, the filenames and screen coordinates of all of the UI stuff, as well as the HUD gauges are hardcoded in the source files.  There are two settings, for 640x480 and for 1024x768.

It would be nice to have all this stuff in yet another .tbl file.  That way it could be customized on an individual basis, or per campaign, etc.  It would be a big file, since every UI widget on every screen would need to be listed, as well as all of the HUD gadgets.  And the resolution could be whatever the UI designer wanted...

Yet another thing to add to the wish list... :rolleyes:
Title: id rather see
Post by: Red5 on May 08, 2002, 10:57:52 pm
we better modify it to somewhere around say around 256 x 224... some of the best video games made like doom and wolfenstein 3d had this resolution as an option...I Dont Know where video game companies get off thinking they should change these resolutions...It makes us people have to update hardware way to much...I was hoping to put of upgrading my ram to 32 megs next year (total ram) but i guess 24 megs and a S2 video card arent what they used to be
Title: 800x600
Post by: Carl on May 09, 2002, 12:49:28 am
the interface art would not have to be changed. ingame stuff would just appear smaller, like ytour desktop does when you turn up the resolution. new icons aren't created, the old ones are just smaller. i think this approach would work well for FS2.
Title: 800x600
Post by: LtNarol on May 09, 2002, 01:15:51 am
it does mean more of the scene has to be rendered, going from 640*480 to 1028*700 (or whatever it is) is quite a large increase and not one my PC can handle, thats just too much calculating, so as i stated before: if you're bent on having higher resolutions, than make an option for it under the options menu, dont make it set to such a high resolution permanently.  I for one can't afford to go out buying hardware very often, getting everything for FS2 costed close to $100 and i dont have that kind of money to spend very often.
Title: 800x600
Post by: EdrickV on May 09, 2002, 02:07:10 am
Quote
Originally posted by penguin
Yeah, the filenames and screen coordinates of all of the UI stuff, as well as the HUD gauges are hardcoded in the source files.  There are two settings, for 640x480 and for 1024x768.

It would be nice to have all this stuff in yet another .tbl file.  That way it could be customized on an individual basis, or per campaign, etc.  It would be a big file, since every UI widget on every screen would need to be listed, as well as all of the HUD gadgets.  And the resolution could be whatever the UI designer wanted...

Yet another thing to add to the wish list... :rolleyes:


Actually, all the interface file names, masks, and the coordinates for things are in table files. Check out mainhall.tbl, menu.tbl, and even help.tbl. The hud filenames appear to be hardcoded though.
Title: 800x600
Post by: CP5670 on May 09, 2002, 09:08:53 am
Quote
the interface art would not have to be changed. ingame stuff would just appear smaller, like ytour desktop does when you turn up the resolution. new icons aren't created, the old ones are just smaller. i think this approach would work well for FS2.



This is what I was thinking as well. We would not need to make any new icons, but simply use the existing ones, although they may look a bit smaller. The menus could be locked into 1024 or something since they do not need 3D acceleration and would work fine on slower computers as well, but the game resolution can be more adjustable.
Title: 800x600
Post by: EdrickV on May 09, 2002, 01:21:54 pm
Quote
Originally posted by CP5670


The menus could be locked into 1024 or something since they do not need 3D acceleration and would work fine on slower computers as well, but the game resolution can be more adjustable.


To do something like that you would have to do some major rewrites and add in code to switch resolutions when going from the hall into a mission. Right now it switches resolutions as soon as it starts and stays that way. The HUD data might still need to be redone too. Don't have the high res pack installed so I can't check if it has high res copies of the hud parts, but I imagine it does.
Title: 800x600
Post by: untouchable on May 09, 2002, 02:11:36 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Bobboau
I have a 8mb S3 Savage 4  ;7
I have a 200mb
GeForce3 Ti200 ;7 ;7
Title: 800x600
Post by: NotDefault on May 09, 2002, 03:39:53 pm
I have a 32MB TNT2 Ultra ;7

It's actually much better than it sounds.  Along with the 400mhz Celeron in this computer, it can handle most games (although the latest types have to be played with very low detail).  It can nearly max out all the FS2 detail settings (on 1024x768, 32bit).
Title: 800x600
Post by: TurboNed on May 09, 2002, 06:19:14 pm
Quote
Originally posted by NotDefault
I have a 32MB TNT2 Ultra ;7

It's actually much better than it sounds.  Along with the 400mhz Celeron in this computer, it can handle most games (although the latest types have to be played with very low detail).  It can nearly max out all the FS2 detail settings (on 1024x768, 32bit).


Same here (though mine's not an Ultra and my processor is a 1 GHz Athlon) - the card's excellent...it even plays JK2 at 1024x768 with decent effects turned on.  

On top of all that, said TNT2 can be had for, uh, dirt cheap.

http://www.pricewatch.com/1/37/3246-1.htm

  --TurboNed
Title: 800x600
Post by: NotDefault on May 09, 2002, 08:05:50 pm
Yeah, I'm very satisfied with this card.  It has lasted more than 3 years ( :eek: ) and still runs almost anything I need it to.  An upgrade is going to be in the works soon though, especially if any of the upgraded FS2 graphics suggestions come to fruition.
Title: 800x600
Post by: NotDefault on May 09, 2002, 08:08:48 pm
Heck, a GeForce 2 can be had for under a $100.  There's really very little excuse to have a card that can't do 1024x768 FS2, nowadays. :)
Title: 800x600
Post by: LtNarol on May 09, 2002, 08:48:56 pm
some of us still cant afford better cards every few months, i have $15.75 right now, with a few pennies and other spare change lying around.  I dont think im going to go spend it on a new 3d accelerator.
Title: 800x600
Post by: EdrickV on May 09, 2002, 09:37:23 pm
I have several reasons for not replacing my trusty V3 with a new card.

1. If it's not broke, don't fix it. I got my Voodoo 3 specifically for use with D3 and FS2. It's worked great for a long while in my old computer (a non-MMX Pentium 1 166 Mhz with 32MB RAM) and now in my new 933 Mhz computer.

2. I never said it couldn't do 1024x768, it can, I'd just never installed the high-res pack. I just proved it to myself. I ran both the first regular mission in the FS2 campaign and my mission on my Robotech MODed FS2, which was a bit jumpy at one point but considering the mod has fighters with 1000+ polys and 1700+ poly scout ships, and it would have had ships with a combined total poly count of about 14,000 on the screen at one time, that wasn't surprising. Gameplay was smoother once I got into combat. AOL being running might have affected that too. Oh, and all those ships don't have multiple LODs. (Making sure the uninstaller wouldn't screw anything up when I uninstalled my formerly "clean" copy wasn't fun, FS2 wasn't designed to be installed twice on a computer.)

3. Glide. I chose the Voodoo3 partly because it supports D3D, OpenGL, and especially Glide. Unless I replaced it with a V4/5 I'd have to give up Glide and programs I have which are Glide only.

4. Money and priorities. I need a new sound card more then a new video card and smaller speakers more then I need a new sound card. The list goes on.

5. Resolution wise, I won't want to use 1024x768 or higher much because of the simple fact that I have a 15" monitor. Higher resolutions then 800x600 just look too small. There's also the fact that FS2's resolution changing screws up my desktop icons if it's set for 1024x768. (It starts off in 1024x768, switches to 640x480 for the intro movie, switches to 800x600 briefly, then back to 1024x768 for the game.)

6. The main campaign I've been interested in, the Robotech MOD, doesn't have 1024x768 artwork and it doesn't look right without it.
Title: 800x600
Post by: LtNarol on May 09, 2002, 09:40:16 pm
why cant people just settle for the option to change resolutions in the options menu?  my computer gets laggy enough on just normal resolution, on 1028*780 it would die.
Title: Re: id rather see
Post by: YodaSean on May 10, 2002, 03:10:43 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Red5
we better modify it to somewhere around say around 256 x 224... some of the best video games made like doom and wolfenstein 3d had this resolution as an option...I Dont Know where video game companies get off thinking they should change these resolutions...It makes us people have to update hardware way to much...I was hoping to put of upgrading my ram to 32 megs next year (total ram) but i guess 24 megs and a S2 video card arent what they used to be


:jaw:   I hope your joking...


I like the idea of making the resolutions higher, not lower.  There isn't any point in spending so much time making it run at 800*600.  I would like to be able to run it at  1280*1024.  I've been looking in the source code to try to find out how to go about doing this but I haven't gotten very far.  Whatever version of directX this is seems to be much more complicated than dx7 or 8
Title: 800x600
Post by: CP5670 on May 10, 2002, 03:19:17 pm
Quote
To do something like that you would have to do some major rewrites and add in code to switch resolutions when going from the hall into a mission. Right now it switches resolutions as soon as it starts and stays that way. The HUD data might still need to be redone too. Don't have the high res pack installed so I can't check if it has high res copies of the hud parts, but I imagine it does.


We could use the DirectDraw 2D portion of DirectX for that, and have it switch to 3D mode when the game is started. I don't think it should be too hard for the more experienced programmers around here; maybe something to simply reference to the function that sets the resolution upon starting the game and a few changes to the memory management systems, although I could be wrong about that. Some of the HUD images might look nicer enlarged, but it would not be an absolutely necessity; as I said earlier, the higher resolution HUDs could simply use the same images but display them smaller. ;)

My personal take on the resolutions is not to worry too much about adding in higher resolutions, but instead fix the antialiasing issues in the game. (this might be easily remedied by updating the game to DX8, and the menus would no longer be an issue if rendered in 2D) Even a 2X antialiased 1024x768 screen looks pretty much just as good as say, a 1600x1200 one in my opinion. ;)
Title: 800x600
Post by: Redfang on May 10, 2002, 04:16:31 pm
Quote
Originally posted by TurboNed
On top of all that, said TNT2 can be had for, uh, dirt cheap.

 
Might be, but you really shouldn't buy[/i] one anymore.
 
Quote
Originally posted by YodaSean
I would like to be able to run it at 1280*1024.

 
It's strange that 1280x1024 is more common resolution than 1280x960, because the second one is more correct.
Title: 800x600
Post by: LtNarol on May 10, 2002, 04:55:01 pm
does no one see the benefits of lower overal resolution?  if the screen was scaled down, it would look better, not worse, for less system drain.  Unless you go to 100*80, you wont notice any less detail, it would free up more system resources so you can have higher resolution maps and end up with a better effect.

Having a higher resolution screen means death to system resources and less noticable detail; in other words, unless you have a brand new computer that costed $800+ with a G4 3d accel, just for a bigger screensize with lower detail of everything (since you only have 14-17 inches of monitor), go with smaller screensizes with higher resolution maps.
Title: 800x600
Post by: YodaSean on May 10, 2002, 05:37:41 pm
Quote
Originally posted by LtNarol
does no one see the benefits of lower overal resolution?  if the screen was scaled down, it would look better, not worse, for less system drain.  Unless you go to 100*80, you wont notice any less detail, it would free up more system resources so you can have higher resolution maps and end up with a better effect.

Having a higher resolution screen means death to system resources and less noticable detail; in other words, unless you have a brand new computer that costed $800+ with a G4 3d accel, just for a bigger screensize with lower detail of everything (since you only have 14-17 inches of monitor), go with smaller screensizes with higher resolution maps.


What are the specs of your system???  The only way a resolution lower than 1024*768 would look better in FS2 is if you already get a really awful framerate.  I have a pentium3 450mhz(really outdated and you could probably find one dirt cheap now) and a Radeon7200(which you can get for around $100) and I can max out all of the options without a noticable drop in framerate.  And I don't think its possible to put the high resolution bitmaps in a low resolution game(thus they are called "high resolution bitmaps").
Title: 800x600
Post by: LtNarol on May 10, 2002, 07:15:39 pm
no, its called a smaller screensize pixelwise to fill the 14-17 inches of monitor, with higher resolution maps.  Its like using a magnifying glass in a sense, you can zoom out way far with a higher pixel screen and see less of everything or you can see more and render less by veiwing few pixels in greater detail, it would really bring out higher resolution maps.

As for my system, 550mhz, 128mb ram, 16b 3d accelerator...needless to say im not buying a $100 3d accelerator for just one game, especially when i only have $15.50 at the moment (not including the various change  i have lying around)
Title: 800x600
Post by: ##UnknownPlayer## on May 11, 2002, 01:20:12 am
Umm, sorry to burst your bubble here but you will need a high power 3D accelerator even if you are running at a low resolution, the reason being that the model textures have to be stored by the accelerator.
Title: 800x600
Post by: LtNarol on May 11, 2002, 07:23:46 am
you can run 512*512 maps at their full resolution on a 16b, and you can always go back to 256*256, thats only a registry thing.
Title: 800x600
Post by: CP5670 on May 11, 2002, 10:36:46 am
you do mean 16mb and not 16b, don't you? :p :D
Title: 800x600
Post by: YodaSean on May 11, 2002, 11:50:24 am
Quote
Originally posted by LtNarol
no, its called a smaller screensize pixelwise to fill the 14-17 inches of monitor, with higher resolution maps.  Its like using a magnifying glass in a sense, you can zoom out way far with a higher pixel screen and see less of everything or you can see more and render less by veiwing few pixels in greater detail, it would really bring out higher resolution maps.
 


So what your saying is that you want to run the game at a mind-numbingly low resolution in a small window so that it doesn't look as bad, but it is almost impossible to see? :wtf:
Title: 800x600
Post by: LtNarol on May 11, 2002, 04:11:11 pm
no, just enlarge pixels so there are few pixels per square inch of monitor, no reason to go to more pixels.  Fewer pixels with higher resolution maps work better anyway.  And i do mean 16b
Title: 800x600
Post by: Grey Wolf on May 11, 2002, 04:39:19 pm
Quote
Originally posted by NotDefault
I have a 32MB TNT2 Ultra ;7

It's actually much better than it sounds.  Along with the 400mhz Celeron in this computer, it can handle most games (although the latest types have to be played with very low detail).  It can nearly max out all the FS2 detail settings (on 1024x768, 32bit).
Hmmm... Maybe processor speed is more important. I have a 550 P3 with a 16MB TNT2, and I run most things with the high graphics level.
Title: 800x600
Post by: el84 on May 11, 2002, 05:28:40 pm
Quote
Originally posted by LtNarol
no, just enlarge pixels so there are few pixels per square inch of monitor, no reason to go to more pixels.  Fewer pixels with higher resolution maps work better anyway.  And i do mean 16b


Aaaargh! My brain hurts just trying to make sense of that. If you didn’t have 1300+ post count, I’d think you are just a troll. But perhaps you just don’t understand technical things like pixels and bytes. Hey, that’s OK if you don’t. Not everyone can be a rocket surgeon.

I am curious: What’s your definition of a “pixel”?
And what unit of measure is a “b”?

This should be good.  ;7
Title: 800x600
Post by: LtNarol on May 11, 2002, 10:00:34 pm
pixel: measurement used for size of graphics, in this case, we're used to shrinking them, what if instead, we enlarged them a bit, make the screen a bit lower resolution, but not by enough that the eye can tell, on the other hand, thats a lot less rendering per second for the system running the engine, we can used that freed up space for better things, on some computers, higher resolution maps.

as for b, bit, i have a 16 bit 3d accelerator, dont know much about what that is in megs, but it runs pretty damn slow; considering i got it for $10 or so, its not that bad.

and watch who you're calling a troll :snipe:

:D

Edit: wow, i do have 1300+ posts, that was fast...i only got up to about 100 on vBB before it went down and i was there a lot longer...
Title: 800x600
Post by: ##UnknownPlayer## on May 12, 2002, 01:10:40 am
High res maps with a lower res overall resolution won't work. All that extra detail will be lost because the screen resolution is lower. Fine lines on the textures and such will look awkward. Anyone with a bit more of an idea about this want to take over?
Title: 800x600
Post by: EdrickV on May 12, 2002, 01:11:28 am
The phrase "16-bit" normally refers to color depth. It doesn't really have anything to do with resolution. If your video card can only do 16-bit color (the Display control panel's settings tab will tell you what you're at and can be used to see how high you can go with different stuff) then it must be worse then a Voodoo 3. The statistic most often touted for 3D cards is the memory. The Voodoo 3 has 16 MB of memory and is capable of 32-bit color at 1024x768. (And maybe higher, but I don't think my monitor supports higher resolutions as it is just a 15" so I can't tell.) 16 bits BTW is two bytes. 8 bits per byte. 1024 bytes per kilobyte. 1024 kilobytes per megabyte. etc. A byte is equal to a number from 0 to 255. Hexadecimal: $00 to $FF. F being the highest single digit "number" in the hex number system. A bit is either a 1 or a 0. It's a base 2 number system and counts oddly. 123 is: 01 10 11. (Binary math is a mess to do manually, since 01 + 01 = 10. ;))

As far as reducing resolution, Direct X, as far as I know, supports 640x480, 640x400, 320x240, 320x200. (And of course higher resolutions which are irrelivent to the matter at hand.) The drop to 640x400 would just make stuff look weird and dropping to 320x240 would result in really bad looking graphics because the graphics would have to be "stretched" to fill the screen. (A single pixel as far as the game is concerned would take up multiple pixels on the actual screen.) I have a game called Magic Carpet. I played it on an old computer with an old monitor in 640x480 and it looked alright. When I got my new computer and tried it, it looked like heck and ran too fast so I had to switch to 800x600 (which is the normal resolution for a 15" I think) and it looked better and ran fine. Lowering the resolution will not improve the graphics quality. An 800x600 option would be nice, but it's not a big deal to me and would be a hassle to make. Not only would you have to rescale the pcx files, you'd have to redo the animations.
Title: 800x600
Post by: LAW ENFORCER on May 12, 2002, 06:01:03 am
My XP2000+ (which is not worth the money but I wanted to upraged my other computer) with a TNT2 ULTRA runs perfectly even better now its overclocked. I am only now starting to notice slow downs in newer games like WTCW (I had to switch it to 'medium' texture details.... still in 1024*762) My 1GHz Athlon with a Kyro2 runs faster though.... my 450 with a TNT2 ULTRA (when I get my box a new Radeon or somet) is rubbish.... proably, I haven't built it up yet.
Title: 800x600
Post by: CP5670 on May 12, 2002, 11:18:15 am
I have a 1400mhz Athlon (TB) running at 1450mhz, 512mb DDR RAM and a Geforce3 (non-Ti) running at 250/575mhz; as can be seen, the stuff is somewhat outdated by now, but I have had a good experience with overclocking and FS2 averages around 150fps on 1024x768x32 and max details. I might upgrade this machine depending on how UT2k3 and U2 run. ;)
Title: 800x600
Post by: LtNarol on May 12, 2002, 01:16:16 pm
ok, you've got nearly 3 times my processing speed, and you're saying thats outdated? (not to mention a much better 3dacclerator and 4 times my ram)
Title: 800x600
Post by: el84 on May 12, 2002, 02:43:34 pm
LtNarol, correct me if I am wrong, I think you were trying to describe the following:

When you are right next to a cap ship, there is very little detail. Far away, the textures look great, but up close they look smeared and stretched. You’d like more detail on big ships at close distances. But you’re concerned that improving this would make FS2 slower on your PC.

A way to improve this is to have the game switch to an alternate texture map (and/or model) as you get near the object. Actually, this already happens. FS2 models have a few LODs (levels of detail). When you are very far from a ship, the game engine uses the lowest LOD, which has very few polygons and a simple texture map. Get closer, and the game engine switches to the next LOD. At a certain distance, the game renders the highest LOD. For really big capships, eventually a tiny portion (just a few pixels) of a single texture is stretched to fill your entire screen.

This has nothing to do with screen resolution. Same thing would happen at 320x200.

Modifying the game engine to use additional LODs is possible – the code to switch LODs is already there. It would be very time consuming, but shouldn’t be that big of a technical challenge. But unless the modelers are willing to spend the time creating these extra LODs, it would be wasted effort.

Any modelers out there want to explain how difficult it would be to make a super-high detailed LOD?
Title: 800x600
Post by: LtNarol on May 12, 2002, 03:59:26 pm
1. im not just worried about capital ships, im more concerned with the fighters at any rate, they have far lower detail closer up.
2. im not a newbie, i know what lods are, i've worked with them before, and fs2 currently supports 6 detail lods, most models only use 4 of which.
3. i model (though i have geometry problems often) and i texture, i know how the engine works, dont treat me like i'm new to modding.
4. increasing the screensize pixelwise is not neccesary to increase the resolution ingame, the texture maps dont even map full use of the 640*480 screen setting.

increasing it would be pointless as unless you have a 24inch monitor, you wouldnt notice a difference unless you hacked the fs2 registry to use maps at 1028*1028 or larger and rescale the maps

at 500 meters or more ingame, everything looks very detailed, when you get to 50 meters, it can use some work, but even then, a 1024*768 screen setting would do little good if the maps are 256*256 (which in case you didnt know, all capital ship maps are).  In fact, even most fighter and bomber maps are 256*256 or smaller, with very few exceptions.
Title: 800x600
Post by: NotDefault on May 12, 2002, 03:59:28 pm
I have a few things to say on the topic.

--------

Voodoo3 can do 32bit in 2D, I believe, but it cannot do 32bit in 3D, which is one of the major failings of the card (versus a TNT2, which is from the same era).

--------

The screen does not get more detailed as you lower the resolution.  If so, no one would be playing at 1024x768, they would be playing at 640x480.  The 1024 is the number of pixels that fit horizontally on the screen, while the 768 is the number that fit vertically.  For example, 10x8 would look like this:

x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x
x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x
x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x
x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x
x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x
x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x
x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x
x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x

Each x is a pixel.  A pixel is a solid block of colour (not exactly, but close enough for the purposes of this explanation).  It is only one colour.  There is no detail to a pixel.  A pixel can be red, but it's only one shade of red.  If you reduced the resolution of your screen to 1x1 (if that was possible), your screen would be a solid block of colour.

Higher resolutions do not always make things smaller, either.  When you resize your desktop, everything becomes smaller because the icons were designed to be a certain pixel width and height, so they look smaller because the pixels are smaller (so as to fit more into your screen).  This is not considered a problem as long as your monitor is big enough to allow you to see things well.

3D games, such as FS2, will not have this smaller effect, because they are using models instead of bitmaps (or equivelant).  These models are rendered and then simplified into the pixels you see on your screen.  The more pixels you have to cover an object (because it's either taking up a large portion of your screen, or you're running a high resolution), the greater detail you see the object in.  Antialiasing is basically a technique for making the simplification less obvious and distracting.

Because of this, you'd think that the higher resolution, the better.  Unfortunately, this is not strictly true, because the models are skinned with bitmaps (or equivelant).  Because of this, they do have pixels pasted onto them.  This means that a model, even at a huge resolution, will look like it has a blocky wallpaper on it instead of a textured surface if the skins are not high resolution enough to cover the monitor pixels that are showing them.  This is unfortunate, because it means that high resolutions don't always give the good looks you'd expect.  Bump mapping is one way of working around this, but it's far from perfect.

--------

I probably missed something or misspoke in places, so if you know what you're talking about, feel free to correct me :).
Title: 800x600
Post by: NotDefault on May 12, 2002, 04:03:40 pm
Doh, of course you manage to post while I'm typing that up :D.

Quote
Originally posted by LtNarol
at 500 meters or more ingame, everything looks very detailed, when you get to 50 meters, it can use some work, but even then, a 1024*768 screen setting would do little good if the maps are 256*256 (which in case you didnt know, all capital ship maps are).  In fact, even most fighter and bomber maps are 256*256 or smaller, with very few exceptions.


Actually, 1024*768 does do good if the maps are 256*256.  If the ship is only filling up about a quarter of the screen, you should be getting approximately the maximum detail possible from the map.  A quarter of the screen is quite a lot, and ships will normally be filling less than this.  Therefore, a higher resolution than 1024*768 would help.

The only major problem comes when a capital ship is viewed at extreme close range, but that isn't the fault of high resolutions, and low resolutions would have just as much of a problem with it.
Title: 800x600
Post by: LtNarol on May 12, 2002, 04:22:43 pm
im not that dumb, i know how pixels work in games for crying out loud, but going to 800*600 means 1/2 more pixels to render, thats quite a lot for a seemingly small increase in detail, and would at the same time lower FPS (thats frames per second el84, you lost yet?).  Going to 1024x768 (god forbid) means more than double the number of pixels and more than double rendering, needless to say this will drag down FPS.  And whats the point of increasing the screen size if you use 256*256 maps? NONE  Therefore, you'll either have wasted a ton of FPS for nothing, or you'll have to hack the fs2 registry and rescale all the maps to 512*512 or larger; given you're apparent press for detail, you'll want 1024*1024 or higher.  This will again detract from FPS.  By now, the game will be barely crawling along on anything short of a Pentium 3 with GF-4 or better, and 256mb+ of ram; in which case you'll have to go to options and dial down detail in there just so the game will move along at a semi reasonable pace-in turn losing all that detail you just spent so much time trying to get by rescaling a hundred or so maps and screwing with the source code.  Now if you're some spoiled rich prick with money to burn and have a bunch of state of the art computer ware just for playing games, you will notice a increase in detail, but anyone else with a Pentium 2 and 128mb of ram will have to play it at next to no detail just so the thing will run.

Decreasing the screen size to 500*375 on the other hand, wont sacrifice much resolution screenwise but will free up HALF of the processing used from 640*480, space that can go to higher resolution maps.  Whats the point of having a 512*512 map if you're running on only 500*375 or screen? Simple: you dont always see the entire map, if you get close to a ship, often you're only seeing part of it, 512*512 maps on 500*375 screens mean you still have decent amounts of detail on capitol ships and fighters even at 50 meters distance.
Title: 800x600
Post by: ##UnknownPlayer## on May 12, 2002, 04:31:28 pm
Exactly! At higher resolutions, more of the detail of the textures can be seen further away, so high resolutions help.

Capital ships have the blurring problem (a substantial improvement on the pixellation of the old days I might add) because they use maps that are the same resolutions as fighters. The only solution there is higher resolution maps, or to use more maps per capship. As such, the easiest solution (minimal game modification) would be to texture the cap ships with more maps.
Title: 800x600
Post by: LtNarol on May 12, 2002, 04:50:30 pm
you get higher resolution on more distant capital ships at higher screen resolution, yes, but in fs2, the things look find and unless you have 20-10 vision (which if you keep playing fs2 at higher details, you wont keep for long), you wont notice the difference in detail for a Hecate at 1000 meters from 640*480 to 1024x768
Title: 800x600
Post by: NotDefault on May 12, 2002, 05:09:53 pm
FS2 will not look better at a resolution lower than 640*480!!!!

Lower resolutions != prettier graphics.

Furthermore, you wouldn't be able to even SEE a 512*512 texture map at 500*375 unless the ship was filling up your entire screen or more.

As for your assertion that 1024*768 bogs the game down to a sludge pace, it does not!  I'm running a 3 year-old (or so) system and it can handle 1024*768, 32 bit, and very-high detail just fine.
Title: 800x600
Post by: LtNarol on May 12, 2002, 05:23:43 pm
im running a 550mhz pc with 128mb ram, and i tell you, running on current resolutions is hell enough of my pc in a dogfight involving 4 wings of enemy fighters with a couple of cruisers in the mix, for even larger scale battles, it would be insane to have a higher resolution.  Also, fighters do not use the entire map for each section, usually an entire fighter is mapped with 1 map for each lod, and that map is cut apart so that part of it corrispond with parts of the fighter, resolution of a fighter is incredably low at 50 meters, which means in formation, when following a ship, or when defending another fighter, it looks like ****.  Also bear in mind that when you're 100 meters away from a destroyer, it you're not seeing any whole maps, you're seeing parts of them, greater than 512*512 maps can be useful for a 500*375 screen resolution, theres no need to go higher than 640*480 in any case, what are you going to do? pick out individual lights on a Hecate at 2 klicks? on normal screens, you'd need a magnifying glass for that, and with the lods used, there would be no point because volition didnt intend on higher detail at longer ranges.
Title: 800x600
Post by: EdrickV on May 12, 2002, 05:37:36 pm
Quote
Originally posted by LtNarol
im running a 550mhz pc with 128mb ram, and i tell you, running on current resolutions is hell enough of my pc in a dogfight involving 4 wings of enemy fighters with a couple of cruisers in the mix, for even larger scale battles, it would be insane to have a higher resolution.


What kind of graphics card do you have in that thing? I ran FS2 (and Descent 3) fine on a P1 non-MMX 166 Mhz with 32 MB RAM and my Voodoo 3 2000 PCI. And I think I had the detail levels at Very High at least, with hardware textures maxed. (Though my 8X CD-ROM drive was ailing enough that some command briefings didn't want to play right, that was the result of an old and heavily used CD-ROM plus buffering rather then anything else and didn't impact the missions themselves.)
Title: 800x600
Post by: LtNarol on May 12, 2002, 06:42:32 pm
some offbrand $10 8-16mb card, dont have the box anymore and im too lazy to dig through CT for the number, but its either 8 or 16mb
Title: 800x600
Post by: EdrickV on May 12, 2002, 07:10:26 pm
Well, there's your problem. You might want to consider saving up for an upgrade. There are some seemingly decent cards at good prices:
(Not New) MSI MS-8817 Nvidia GeForce2 MX 32MB AGP Video Card - PULLED OEM Chipset 2x/4X Interface: AGP 256-bit Resolution of 2048x1536 @75Hz / 30 day
(Part - PMS8817)
 $ 18
From PriceWatch.com
Looks like a good deal since there are more expensive 16 MB cards after it. It's in the "Not Exactly New" catagory. Shipping would be $9.00, but all in all it's cheaper then a card in the store. (Probably not as good, but I'm sure it's better then what you've got.)
And, even if new resolutions are added, (and to me that's a big if) we're not going to take 640x480 or 1024x768 out. :) As for me, I'm still happy with my V3. It does what I want it to just fine.
Title: 800x600
Post by: LtNarol on May 12, 2002, 08:30:34 pm
anything more than $10 is over my budget, especially seeing as i only have about $15 and some of that needs to go to other things.
Title: 800x600
Post by: NotDefault on May 13, 2002, 12:35:54 am
You can stick with 640*480 if you like.  This doesn't mean that resolutions smaller than 640*480 should be added.  It's really not worth the effort.  On the other hand, resolutions higher than 1024*768 can have beneficial effects.  At the very least, there's a lot more people who want higher resolutions than those who want lower resolutions.
Title: 800x600
Post by: ##UnknownPlayer## on May 13, 2002, 01:10:54 am
Yeah - case closed. The bottom line is no one who wants to program is gonna do this since there's not enough behind it and no real good reasons too.
Title: 800x600
Post by: EdrickV on May 13, 2002, 01:58:08 am
Quote
Originally posted by LtNarol
anything more than $10 is over my budget, especially seeing as i only have about $15 and some of that needs to go to other things.


That's why I said you might want to save up. Don't know if you have a job or what, but you probably have some method of getting money and if you save a little bit you can accumulate money. (If you saved $1 every week for a whole year you'd have $52.) And there are always birthdays, Christmas, donations from friends, whatever. If I had a card that did FS2 as badly as yours seems to I'd try saving what money I could to, eventually, buy a better card when my money exceeded the price of a decent new/used card. :) (There are cards under $10 these days, but not likely any better then what you have.) But you may have other things you need more so your financial situation is yours to deal with. :)
Title: 800x600
Post by: LtNarol on May 13, 2002, 08:01:11 am
ok, im not going to spend a month's worth of savings on a new card if its going to be obsolete within half a year, i dont have that kind of income.  As for reasons to go smaller, i can think of plenty of reasons, first of which smoother gameplay and second, system resources freed for other things, you wouldnt notice a difference between 640*480 and 500*375, nor would you notice much from 800*600 (if any at all)
Title: 800x600
Post by: Redfang on May 13, 2002, 08:54:12 am
Well, I can't explain all that texture map and resolution thing (because I don't know too much about them, just something), but when I tried FS2 with 1024x768 it really looked much better than with 640x480. But my computer didn't handle it too well, and I'm not going to upgrade. But I guess I'm getting a new computer someday. :nod:
 
Quote
Originally posted by CP5670
I have a 1400mhz Athlon (TB) running at 1450mhz, 512mb DDR RAM and a Geforce3 (non-Ti) running at 250/575mhz; as can be seen, the stuff is somewhat outdated by now, but I have had a good experience with overclocking and FS2 averages around 150fps on 1024x768x32 and max details. I might upgrade this machine depending on how UT2k3 and U2 run. ;)

 
I guess that's not outdated. And with the overclocks it's even less outdated.
Title: 800x600
Post by: Bobboau on May 13, 2002, 12:07:14 pm
has anyone thought about something like mip mapping, basicly just have a supar dupar high resolution map and as you get closer to an individual poly on LOD 0  you aply the high resolution map were the normal low res one was
Title: 800x600
Post by: CP5670 on May 13, 2002, 01:38:06 pm
Quote
I guess that's not outdated. And with the overclocks it's even less outdated.


I guess I am a little bit crazy here; anything that is not absolutely top-of-the-line is outdated to me. :p :D
Title: 800x600
Post by: Grey Wolf on May 13, 2002, 01:46:53 pm
How exactly do you overclock a computer anyway?
Title: 800x600
Post by: Redfang on May 13, 2002, 01:56:26 pm
Quote
Originally posted by CP5670


I guess I am a little bit crazy here

 
Not only in that thing... :D:p
 
Quote
Originally posted by Grey Wolf 2009
How exactly do you overclock a computer anyway?

 
From the BIOS (processor, FSB, memory), and video cards with tweak programs.
Title: 800x600
Post by: Grey Wolf on May 13, 2002, 02:01:45 pm
But where would I get the tweak programs (hint: post a link, if possible)?
Title: 800x600
Post by: YodaSean on May 13, 2002, 03:03:34 pm
Quote
Originally posted by EdrickV

As far as reducing resolution, Direct X, as far as I know, supports 640x480, 640x400, 320x240, 320x200. (And of course higher resolutions which are irrelivent to the matter at hand.)


Actually I think DirectX can support just about any resolution you want(as in something weird like 423*380)
Title: 800x600
Post by: EdrickV on May 13, 2002, 03:20:37 pm
Quote
Originally posted by YodaSean

Actually I think DirectX can support just about any resolution you want(as in something weird like 423*380)


I thought I read somewhere, maybe in the DX6 SDK I used to have, that there are only certain resolutions you can use, both because the monitor has to support it and because DirectX has to support it. But I haven't been able to find anything in MSDN to confirm or deny it and don't have any DirectX (or Open GL) fullscreen programs I could test odd resolutions with.
Title: 800x600
Post by: YodaSean on May 13, 2002, 05:17:33 pm
Oops!  Your right.  I just tested it and it seems directx can do any resolution, but your hardware has to support it.
Title: 800x600
Post by: Bobboau on May 13, 2002, 08:34:10 pm
any res even something like
17X4364
Title: 800x600
Post by: TurboNed on May 14, 2002, 02:58:29 am
Quote
Originally posted by LtNarol

increasing it would be pointless as unless you have a 24inch monitor, you wouldnt notice a difference unless you hacked the fs2 registry to use maps at 1028*1028 or larger and rescale the maps

at 500 meters or more ingame, everything looks very detailed, when you get to 50 meters, it can use some work, but even then, a 1024*768 screen setting would do little good if the maps are 256*256 (which in case you didnt know, all capital ship maps are).  In fact, even most fighter and bomber maps are 256*256 or smaller, with very few exceptions.


LtNarol, you're not fully making sense here.  Comparing texture map resolution with screen resolution is comparing apples with electron microscopes, they're not anywhere near the same thing.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you're saying that a game at 1024x768 is wasting resources to gain absolutely no graphical detail at all unless the texture maps are at 1024x768, right?

Then consider this.  A flatshaded untextured polygonal based game.  By your logic, that game would only need a resolution of 1x1 to look the best, right?  After all, the effective "texture map resolution" of the polys is only 1x1.  However, we all know that that isn't true.  The higher the resolution the better, even (ESPECIALLY) in flatshaded untextured polygonal worlds.  The screen resolution is used to draw sharper lines with fewer jaggies.  The extra pixels are used to draw more details on ships farther away.  Anyway, I (and several others) could jabber about this all day, so I decided to load up Jedi Knight 2 (as that's what I have handy at the moment) and take a few screenies to show off what I'm talking about.

There are six shots.  The first set is at 640x480.  The second set is at 1024x768.  The third shot is at 1280x1024.  None of these shots have been tweaked or anything, I went ingame, snapped a shot, changed settings, snapped the next shot, etc..

The first shot in each case is with textures set to "Very High" resolution, the second shot in each set is with textures set to "Low" resolution.  Compare for yourself.  I think you'll see that even with textures set at "Low" the 1280x1024 shot shows more detail than the 640x480, simply because it can more accurately project the mathematical coordinates of vertices of 3d polygons onto the pseudo-2d surface of your monitor.

(http://turboned.dnsart.com/jpg/shot0004.jpg)

(http://turboned.dnsart.com/jpg/shot0005.jpg)

(http://turboned.dnsart.com/jpg/shot0000.jpg)

(http://turboned.dnsart.com/jpg/shot0001.jpg)

(http://turboned.dnsart.com/jpg/shot0002.jpg)

(http://turboned.dnsart.com/jpg/shot0003.jpg)
Title: 800x600
Post by: LtNarol on May 14, 2002, 08:02:25 am
consider this: you have a screen set to 1024*768, you think you have such high resolution, heres the thing: thats rendering somewhere like twice the number of pixels renderd for 640*480, if not tripple (did the math already, dont feel like finding my calculator right now, but its up there somewhere).  Now consider what you get: resize all the pixel maps by the same factor you sized up the screen, so you keep the same ratio and effects dont look incredably tiny.  At the same time, if you dont scale up the texture maps, what do you get when you close in on a ship?  no better quality.  the only thing that would benefit from 1024*768 is the backgrounds and a few effects, but they look fine already on most monitors, 640*480 is more than enough for that.  Now if you scale up all the maps, somewhere like 60-100 or so (correct me if im wrong on this), you're puting in a lot of time and bigger maps like that will cost memory when the engine renders them.  Keep in mind your goal: better resolution in game.  If you dont scale up the texture maps for the ships, you gain nothing.  look at it this way: 1024*768 does NOT increase the resolution on maps unless the maps them selves is higher, the only time you'll see the maps better is at great distances when the pixels merge more, but thats why they invented the lod.  Unless you have something larger than a 17inch screen, you wouldnt notice the changes if you just change the screen.  If you increase the maps, it'll look better at closer distances, but like i said, thats more memory ingame.

hope that made sense to you.
Title: 800x600
Post by: Redfang on May 14, 2002, 11:12:28 am
Quote
Originally posted by LtNarol
Unless you have something larger than a 17inch screen, you wouldnt notice the changes if you just change the screen.  If you increase the maps, it'll look better at closer distances, but like i said, thats more memory ingame.

hope that made sense to you.

 
Have you ever tried some bigger resolution than 640x480? I have a 15" screen (:doh: ), and I think I believe my own eyes, not you. :rolleyes: If I tried 640x480 vs. 1024x768 in FS2 and it looked so much better then why should I believe you?
 
Also, if the game is running at 200fps in 640x480, it still should be running enough fps in 1024x768, so why play at that resolution? And if you would be running in 640x480, the game would be usually processor limited. So if you'd add 4xAA or increase resolution you might experience no[/i] fps drop. But of course you need a good videocard. :nod:
Title: 800x600
Post by: penguin on May 14, 2002, 11:53:59 am
Quote
Originally posted by LtNarol
consider this: you have a screen set to 1024*768, you think you have such high resolution, heres the thing: thats rendering somewhere like twice the number of pixels renderd for 640*480...
I had a long-winded response written last night, but a thunderstorm knocked out the power for 3 hours before I submitted :mad:  Here's the abridged rant:

At a higher resolution, you will get a sharper picture -- end of story.  The pixels are smaller, you have more per inch.  You are correct that an unscaled image will not look significantly better at a higher resolution.  But every image in FS2 is scaled, unless you're floating 25m from the side of a capship, and remain perpendicular to it and don't move.  You don't "scale up the maps," this is what the 3d engine does, constantly.

Remember:
Yeah, higher resolutions will require more resources, which will result in a worse framerate, that's why it's an option...
Quote
hope that made sense to you.
Sorry, but no.
Title: 800x600
Post by: YodaSean on May 14, 2002, 04:41:29 pm
Quote
Originally posted by LtNarol
consider this: you have a screen set to 1024*768, you think you have such high resolution, heres the thing: thats rendering somewhere like twice the number of pixels renderd for 640*480, if not tripple (did the math already, dont feel like finding my calculator right now, but its up there somewhere).


That makes sense, but many of us have computer setups that can run games at 1024*768 without a problem, and don't care about the increase in computer power needed:wink:  Thats why it would be nice to have other higher resolutions so some people can enjoy high resolutions and some can enjoy low resolutions
Title: 800x600
Post by: LtNarol on May 14, 2002, 05:03:48 pm
auto scaling of maps i know about NEWBIE, i have worked with maps before you know.  As for why you cant just rely on auto scaling, its because autoscaling done by the engine does NOT increase any detail from the 256*256 version, if you set the engine to use all 1024*1024 maps, then each pixel of the 256*256 map will be changed to a square of 4*4 pixels.  You would gain NO additional resolution on the maps themselves, only slightly sharper images at longer distances.  You have to manually rescale all the maps by hand, apply filters to increase the detail, or remake them at higher resolutions in order to actually get a better effect.
Title: 800x600
Post by: penguin on May 14, 2002, 07:31:41 pm
Quote
Originally posted by LtNarol
You would gain NO additional resolution on the maps themselves, only slightly sharper images at longer distances.
OK, I agree, if you consider being 10 meters from an object a "longer distance."  Any further than that, the textures are probably being scaled down, anyhow.  

Obviously it depends on the model and the texures that are used, how they're applied, etc.  But I think this is true for most ships in FS/FS2, certainly for all the fighters & bombers.
Title: 800x600
Post by: LtNarol on May 14, 2002, 09:21:26 pm
Quote
Originally posted by penguin
OK, I agree, if you consider being 10 meters from an object a "longer distance."  Any further than that, the textures are probably being scaled down, anyhow.  

Obviously it depends on the model and the texures that are used, how they're applied, etc.  But I think this is true for most ships in FS/FS2, certainly for all the fighters & bombers.
textures are not scaled down that way, the game uses LODS (level of detail), each lod is textured with a specific set of textures designed for that lod.  The engine does not rescale the textures to 250*250, 244*244, 230*230, etc.  It simply switches to different lods.  And at 10 meters from a ship, you wont see a whole map, more reason to have higher detail maps instead of higher pixels per screen.  Sure, as pixels begin to merge, you lose detail, but are you going to pick out individual lights or turrets on a capital ship at 2000 meters? not without a magnifying glass.
Title: 800x600
Post by: CP5670 on May 14, 2002, 09:25:34 pm
Quote
I had a long-winded response written last night, but a thunderstorm knocked out the power for 3 hours before I submitted :mad: Here's the abridged rant:


Hey, you had the same problem? The power here also went out due to a thunderstorm, resulting in my computer suddenly turning off, but I wasn't doing anything important and the outage only lasted for a few seconds.
Title: 800x600
Post by: penguin on May 14, 2002, 09:50:29 pm
Quote
Originally posted by LtNarol
textures are not scaled down that way, the game uses LODS (level of detail), each lod is textured with a specific set of textures designed for that lod.  The engine does not rescale the textures to 250*250, 244*244, 230*230, etc.  It simply switches to different lods.  And at 10 meters from a ship, you wont see a whole map, more reason to have higher detail maps instead of higher pixels per screen.  Sure, as pixels begin to merge, you lose detail, but are you going to pick out individual lights or turrets on a capital ship at 2000 meters? not without a magnifying glass.
OK, this is the last post I'll make about this, it's making my head hurt.

LtNarol, maybe we're not talking about the same thing.  

Let's think of a concrete example: an Ursa 25 m away, straight ahead.  The textures on your display (in the framebuffer) are most likely NOT occupying 256x256 (or whatever) pixels on your screen.  Most textures will be distorted one way or another (unless the polygon's normal is parallel to your line-of sight).  Can we at least agree that a square face that is pointing 45 degrees away from you is no longer a square (in the framebuffer)?  Although the map is not changing, the image on the screen is.

OK, now move the Ursa 1 m away from you, so that it's 26 m away.  We are still using the same LOD.  The Ursa is smaller on the screen, right?  The textures as they're displayed in the framebuffer have been scaled.  This is not scaling from a modding perspective, nor is it changing the LOD, this is the 3d engine rasterizing the texture onto a smaller fragment.  I hope we can agree that however many pixels the Ursa occupied on the screen at 25 m, it is occupying fewer at 26 m.

This is what I was talking about when I said the 3d engine is constantly scaling.  It has nothing to do with LOD.  When something (at the same LOD) is further away, the same textures must cover a smaller number of pixels.  So yes, the engine -- DirectX in the case of FS -- does rescale textures from 256x256 to 244x244, 230x230, etc., the further you get away.  If it didn't, the textures would slide all over the model as it moved around.

And I think you'll find in 95% of the time, the textures on the screen are actually being scaled down unless you're right on top of the ship.
Title: 800x600
Post by: EdrickV on May 14, 2002, 09:56:08 pm
Quote
Originally posted by LtNarol
textures are not scaled down that way, the game uses LODS (level of detail), each lod is textured with a specific set of textures designed for that lod.  The engine does not rescale the textures to 250*250, 244*244, 230*230, etc.  It simply switches to different lods.


There are only so many LoDs. While you are moving towards and away from a model within a specific LoD the game will have to rescale the model and textures on the fly. Otherwise it would look like you weren't going anywhere until you switched LoDs. Also, not all models have multiple LoDs. (Some MODs probably don't use multiple LoDs, at least for early versions.) For them the models and textures applied would have to be rescaled. That's one of the main things the graphics engine does.

Edit: Looks like I was a little late. The post above says what I was trying to say a lot better. :)
Title: 800x600
Post by: Petrarch of the VBB on May 20, 2003, 10:26:47 am
For god sake, this could go one forever.

Leave. The. Resolutions. Alone.
Title: 800x600
Post by: karajorma on May 20, 2003, 11:11:35 am
Quote
Originally posted by Petrarch of the VBB
For god sake, this could go one forever.

Leave. The. Resolutions. Alone.


You bumped this after a year to tell everyone to leave it alone? :rolleyes:
Title: 800x600
Post by: Petrarch of the VBB on May 20, 2003, 11:28:30 am
Forgive me, I did not know it was such heinous bumpage.

I'm sure I saw this thread in the recent posts list. How queer.

Somone is now bound to hit me for this transgression.
Title: 800x600
Post by: Steel on May 20, 2003, 11:59:41 am
more intermediate resolutions would be a good thing...  some points to be considered:

unfortunately, as suggested above, starting from the high end and then scaling down, in the engine if possible, it probably the very best way to go about it.  then you have ONE set of graphics files to download and store on your hard drive.

one thing to consider with this approach though - how does it impact performance with the additional processing of scaling down the graphics.

additionally, disk space is cheap these days - relativle speaking.

the issue is to measure these different approaches vs. the existing community's desires and the desire to bring more folks into the community.

also, how much work would it be to create a graphics engine that can do the scaling, and is someone available to do that work.
Title: 800x600
Post by: KARMA on May 20, 2003, 12:16:25 pm
higher res will have sense just for ingame action(3d), and if i correctly understood the game already switch at the beginning of the missions btween 2d (menus) and 3d (ingame).
So the problem is the ingame interface.
I don't think that it will be *so* easy to manually scale up/down all the anis, except the very simple ones, so or they will not change (they will look smaller, not a problem for example at 1240, but a problem maybe on even higher res) or they can be automatically scaled by engine, and i don't know if this is possible and with what amount of resources.
Some artwork can instead be scaled manually i think (only the ingame static interface shouldn't be a lot, i think)
Althought i won't benefit from this (i still play with a voodoo2) i personally think that an higher ingame res could give fs2 a far longer longevity, since better gpu's can handle higher resolutions w/o problems providing a far better aspect to the whole thing.
As far as i can remember in the many other games the 2d artwork is not present in different versions for each resolution, but there are some versions for some resolutions, and between those res' the artwork don't change (it just look smaller), correct me if i'm wrong
Title: 800x600
Post by: Petrarch of the VBB on May 20, 2003, 12:29:38 pm
WHAT HAVE I DONE?!
Title: 800x600
Post by: KARMA on May 20, 2003, 02:53:37 pm
change the nick to "pandora of the vbb":lol:
Title: 800x600
Post by: karajorma on May 20, 2003, 07:19:05 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Petrarch of the VBB
WHAT HAVE I DONE?!


In the future I will point to this thread when people ask me "What does irony mean?" :lol:
Title: 800x600
Post by: Kazan on May 21, 2003, 11:08:24 am
video cards that could run fs2 at 1600x1200 cost $50-$100 now

if you cannot handle 1024x768 and think you can't afford to upgrade get out of gaming
Title: 800x600
Post by: Petrarch of the VBB on May 21, 2003, 11:15:36 am
My Video card can handle higher resolutions. My monitor can't. It will be the same for many others.

Besides, there is nothing wrong with 640*480.
Title: 800x600
Post by: EdrickV on May 21, 2003, 11:24:30 am
1024x768 is too high a resolution to look good on my monitor, though for FS2 the only difference I recall seeing is that the text was harder to read. And, when it comes to hardware upgrades, not everyone has much money to spend. A new video card for me would be about 4-6 weeks worth of money, and that's for a card like the GeForce 5200's.
Title: 800x600
Post by: Ulala on May 21, 2003, 09:48:52 pm
I demand 2048x1536 resolution! Post haste!
Title: 800x600
Post by: Sandwich on May 22, 2003, 04:53:10 am
40 lashes with a wet noodle for you, Petrarch! :hopping:

And where's Lt. Narol? Has he upgraded his reli...errr, computer yet? :D
Title: 800x600
Post by: LtNarol on May 22, 2003, 04:25:15 pm
No, I'm still on that TNT2 and 550 AMD-hunk-o-junk ;)

As for that resolution debate, I don't think penguin and I are refering to the same thing... just what I was talking about I really don't know (come on, I haven't looked at this thread for god knows how long).  I think my point was that higher resolutions wouldn't provide much gain without higher resolution maps...

Oh, and Kazan, not all of us have $50 to spend on hardware.
Title: 800x600
Post by: Petrarch of the VBB on May 22, 2003, 04:27:20 pm
Hear Hear, Narol. It's all very well saying, "Get a new GFX card" but many of us are poor. And anyway, my GFX card supports up to and beyond 1600*1200, but my monitor only goes up to 1024*768, and I can't afford a new one.

And it's not as if FS looks bad in 640*480, in fact, it looks quite good.
Title: 800x600
Post by: KARMA on May 22, 2003, 04:50:05 pm
i have a p2 400+ voodoo2 ....
surely i wouldn't benefit from higher resolutions as said, but a game that can be played at higher resolutions will have a longer longevity in my opinion, will look better on more updated computers (no matter if the textures are low res), and with graphic upgrades from scp will be likely more played
Title: 800x600
Post by: Unknown Target on May 22, 2003, 04:58:46 pm
I used to have that machine, (P2 400, VooDoo 2), but I upgraded when it wouldn't run Mech 4 because that game didn't support the card :D
Title: 800x600
Post by: YodaSean on May 24, 2003, 03:30:00 pm
i thought this thread was like really old or something...and its not:confused: :confused: :confused: :confused:
Title: 800x600
Post by: Sesquipedalian on May 24, 2003, 06:31:34 pm
Quote
Originally posted by YodaSean
i thought this thread was like really old or something...and its not
It isn't merely "like" really old, it is really old.  Please let it fall back into the depths now.
Title: 800x600
Post by: Ulala on May 25, 2003, 12:46:44 pm
Quote
Originally posted by KARMA
a game that can be played at higher resolutions will have a longer longevity in my opinion, will look better on more updated computers (no matter if the textures are low res), and with graphic upgrades from scp will be likely more played


I'm no graphics artist or coder or anything, in fact I know nothing of the source code or what's possible or what's not (I just play the game), but I think this is a good point, assuming it's possible. I have a AMD Ath 2700+, 512 DDR, and a Radeon 9500 pro and it's almost pointless to install something like FS2 onto it because the graphics are becoming more and more dated. Okay, flame away. :D
Title: 800x600
Post by: YodaSean on May 25, 2003, 08:29:54 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Sesquipedalian
It isn't merely "like" really old, it is really old.  Please let it fall back into the depths now.


sorry, it kept popping up on my subscribed thread email thingy(even though i never subscribe to threads), and I was pretty sure it was like a year old or something, but I didn't read the dates carefully and thought I was just going insane or something o_O
Title: 800x600
Post by: RandomTiger on May 28, 2003, 07:01:36 am
Quote
Originally posted by CP5670


This is what I was thinking as well. We would not need to make any new icons, but simply use the existing ones, although they may look a bit smaller. The menus could be locked into 1024 or something since they do not need 3D acceleration and would work fine on slower computers as well, but the game resolution can be more adjustable.


You would still need to do the 2D HUD stuff which is just about the same thing as the menu anyway.

Stretching might be worth looking at however texture sectioning would be likely to cause seams.
Title: 800x600
Post by: CptWhite on June 04, 2003, 06:38:30 am
does anyone feel like they're talking to a brick wall i few simple truths:

Title: 1280x1024
Post by: FreeTerran on June 04, 2003, 09:51:05 am
I know it exist a 800x600 thread here but is it hard to code the 1280x1024 support i think many guys have a new good graphic card geforce 2 and up is there enough or ?
Title: 800x600
Post by: KARMA on June 04, 2003, 10:22:25 am
ok... so you know that there is the 800x600 thread...
so why you opened this one too??:rolleyes: ;)
and if you read the 800x 600 thread you will find by yourself the reply to your question:ha: :p
btw it is not a problem of coding, well.. not only
Title: 800x600
Post by: FreeTerran on June 04, 2003, 10:27:51 am
And why do the SCP guys it not ?
Or do they it ?
Title: 800x600
Post by: Darkage on June 04, 2003, 10:35:16 am
There is no point in doing higher resolution. You need to redo all of the Interface art. And i don't mean resizing it because that doesn't look good. And you already know your answer from the 800x600 thread.
Title: 800x600
Post by: Nico on June 04, 2003, 11:14:23 am
Quote
Originally posted by Darkage
There is no point in doing higher resolution. You need to redo all of the Interface art. And i don't mean resizing it because that doesn't look good. And you already know your answer from the 800x600 thread.



actually, not really. the things can just turn smaller as you up the resolution ( as it is done in many, many games ), that wouldn't be a pb as it is the other way around.
and btw, I'm more interested in higher resolutions than lower ones :doubt:
Title: 800x600
Post by: Vilkacis on June 04, 2003, 11:17:18 am
Wouldn't it be possible to have the game switch to higher resolution only when in space?
Title: 800x600
Post by: Darkage on June 04, 2003, 11:18:00 am
1024*768 works fine for me, my machine can handle higher but it looks fine as it is IMO:)
Title: 800x600
Post by: Petrarch of the VBB on June 04, 2003, 11:38:07 am
Quote
Originally posted by Darkage
1024*768 works fine for me, my machine can handle higher but it looks fine as it is IMO:)


Hear Hear.


BTW, it looks fine in 640*480, IMHO.
Title: 800x600
Post by: diamondgeezer on June 04, 2003, 02:05:49 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Vilkacis
Wouldn't it be possible to have the game switch to higher resolution only when in space?

By 'interface art' read 'HUD' - the HUD gagues wouldn't look any crisper just by upping the resolution. They'd need to be redrawn, in higer res. And nobody can be bothered. I don't blame them.
Title: 800x600
Post by: bottomfan on June 04, 2003, 02:10:05 pm
I dont get what all the fuzz is about....:nervous:
Title: Re: Re: 800x600
Post by: Woolie Wool on June 04, 2003, 04:54:07 pm
Quote
Originally posted by penguin

From a code point of view the changes would probably be trivial.

The difficulty would be the hundred-or-so graphics that make up the UI screens the HUD, etc. which are all either 640x480 or 1024x786.  Open up sparky-hi.vp in VPViewer -- each of those files would have to be converted to the different resolution.  You could scale it in Gimp or Photoshop or whatever your drawing program of choice is, but it would probably look pretty crappy.

It doesn't matter if it's 800x600 or 1600x1200 -- lotsa new images would need to be created.


Why not just stretch the 640x480 interface art to accomodate 800x600? It might not look perfect, but it would be quite simple and I wouldn't have to download 100MB of GUI art.
Title: 800x600
Post by: Woolie Wool on June 04, 2003, 04:56:18 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Ulala


I'm no graphics artist or coder or anything, in fact I know nothing of the source code or what's possible or what's not (I just play the game), but I think this is a good point, assuming it's possible. I have a AMD Ath 2700+, 512 DDR, and a Radeon 9500 pro and it's almost pointless to install something like FS2 onto it because the graphics are becoming more and more dated. Okay, flame away. :D


The beams will never look dated.:p
Title: Re: Re: Re: 800x600
Post by: EdrickV on June 04, 2003, 05:52:51 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Woolie Wool


Why not just stretch the 640x480 interface art to accomodate 800x600? It might not look perfect, but it would be quite simple and I wouldn't have to download 100MB of GUI art.


The interface wouldn't likely look any better in 800x600 then it would in 640x480. It might even look worse if you just scaled up the 640x480 graphics. (Either manually or by software.) And the graphics themselves are only half the problem, all the locations of the various interface parts are hardcoded into the game on a per resolution basis. Changing that would require a lot of work for little benefit. IMHO, this is a "do it yourself" situation. If you want an 800x600 resolution bad enough, then you'll probably have to do it yourself.
Title: 800x600
Post by: IceFire on June 04, 2003, 08:13:42 pm
Leave it at 1024 and make sure that the SCP allows us to enable high levels of FSAA and Aniostropic filtering or something and we'll be happy.  Who really needs to have a higher resolution with those features enabled....other than for bragging rights maybe....
Title: 800x600
Post by: Nico on June 05, 2003, 01:58:13 am
Quote
Originally posted by IceFire
Leave it at 1024 and make sure that the SCP allows us to enable high levels of FSAA and Aniostropic filtering or something and we'll be happy.  Who really needs to have a higher resolution with those features enabled....other than for bragging rights maybe....


the ones that have a 21" and where you do see the pixels...
Title: 800x600
Post by: Sesquipedalian on June 05, 2003, 02:14:37 am
Quote
Originally posted by Venom


the ones that have a 21" and where you do see the pixels...
Serves them right for having so much money to spare.
Title: 800x600
Post by: Nico on June 05, 2003, 02:33:22 am
Quote
Originally posted by Sesquipedalian
Serves them right for having so much money to spare.


don't be jealous, I paid mine half the price, from a company that went bankrupt :D ( heh, a brand new 21" for half the price, who would spit on it? :D )
Title: 800x600
Post by: Bobboau on June 05, 2003, 02:37:48 am
well not only would new art need to be made but for every thing you see on screen at any time you would need to find and adgust four coordanants
Title: 800x600
Post by: CptWhite on June 05, 2003, 04:47:06 am
may i suggest to REDUCE the high res graphics instead, good look converting and renaming all those 2000 odd misc interface graphics pieces.
Title: 800x600
Post by: RandomTiger on June 05, 2003, 06:54:02 am
I was playing around with this last night. The locations for the bitmaps seem to be in arrays that I accessed and scaled acording to the new res against what it was meant for.

Now I just need to scale the width and height themselves.
It might not be so difficult but I suspect that stetching the textures will blur them too much and leave obvious joins with the main hall animations.

The advantage of stretching though it that one set of bitmaps can be used for all modes 640x480, 1280x1024 etc. In the future people could make hi res texture art and people running it at lower res just get scaled down versions, not too difficult using D3DX's texture helper functions.

Could a moderator or admin merge this with the 800x600 thread please.
[color=66ff00]Done, Maeg. [/color]
Title: 800x600
Post by: EdrickV on June 05, 2003, 06:15:26 pm
Quote
Originally posted by IceFire
Leave it at 1024 and make sure that the SCP allows us to enable high levels of FSAA and Aniostropic filtering or something and we'll be happy.  Who really needs to have a higher resolution with those features enabled....other than for bragging rights maybe....


Incidental note: The GeForce 5200 and probably other GeForce cards should allow you to set FSAA and Aniostropic filtering settings independent of what settings are available in the game itself. :) Though I don't really know what the latter actually does.
Title: 800x600
Post by: phreak on June 05, 2003, 09:51:46 pm
any card with GL_ARB_multisample could use FSAA.  I've never tested it since i don't have a card that supports it.  I know anything above a Geforce 3 will, but not too sure about Radeons.

As for Ansiotropic filtering (never could spell that right ;)), any card with GL_EXT_texture_filter_anisotropic will do this.  I actually have code that *should* be working in game that does this, but i have yet to see any comparative pics.
Title: 800x600
Post by: Sandwich on June 06, 2003, 01:54:48 am
Quote
Originally posted by PhReAk
As for Ansiotropic filtering (never could spell that right ;)), any card with GL_EXT_texture_filter_anisotropic will do this.  I actually have code that *should* be working in game that does this, but i have yet to see any comparative pics.


Yeah, but what does it do? :p
Title: 800x600
Post by: Nico on June 06, 2003, 02:03:28 am
bah, FSAA is a joke. anti aliasing makes things looks more smooth, ok, but the her2 you see 100 meters in front of you was a big chunk of pixels w/o FSAA, it will remain a bunch of pixels with FSAA too.
Title: 800x600
Post by: Bobboau on June 06, 2003, 06:24:28 am
ansiotropic filtering is a method of pulling colors from a bit map and transfering them to the screen while rendering a polygon, it is the nicest, yet by far slowest, method of doing this, I don't think it would be of much use in FS the only time you *might* see it is when you are flying along a huge capship, this is more something for FPSs
Title: 800x600
Post by: phreak on June 06, 2003, 09:55:37 am
http://developer.nvidia.com/docs/IO/1324/ATT/filter_anisotropic2.doc
Title: 800x600
Post by: phreak on June 06, 2003, 11:32:08 am
once we can get 32-bit textures, we anisotropic filtering would work since we need mipmaps and the opengl mipmap function doesn't like the 565 or 1555 texture format.
Title: 800x600
Post by: Nico on June 06, 2003, 11:53:35 am
to be honest I still can't see the usefulness of 32 bits maps.
Title: 800x600
Post by: RandomTiger on June 09, 2003, 06:40:02 am
Quote
Originally posted by Venom
to be honest I still can't see the usefulness of 32 bits maps.


Um... quality?
Title: 800x600
Post by: Nico on June 09, 2003, 08:54:57 am
I've made many, many maps, and I can tell you you can't see the difference at all when you convert to 256 colors ( well, if you don't use photoshop, that is ). huge waste of resources, if you ask me. and bigger files just to make lazy moders happy...
Title: 800x600
Post by: CptWhite on June 09, 2003, 10:12:50 am
it would benefit backgrounds venom , file sizes wuld be kept the same if we used the dx format, talk to phreak about that...
Title: 800x600
Post by: phreak on June 09, 2003, 10:28:28 am
well it only works in opengl.  i want to talk to RT about using it in d3d.  the d3d version should support everything
Title: 800x600
Post by: EdrickV on June 09, 2003, 02:38:57 pm
Quote
Originally posted by RandomTiger


Um... quality?


Do you really need to use millions of colors in a single texture? 256 provides for quite a bit of color choices, as long as you use a good program to save the image in indexed mode. It's not like you're making photo realistic ships after all. :)
Title: 800x600
Post by: phreak on June 09, 2003, 02:54:03 pm
well the image code converts an indexed image into a 24 bit bitmap in memory and then swizzles it into a 16 bit 1555 (ABGR) bitmap.  The opengl mipmap function doesn't like 1555 textures.  so if we were to use ansiotropic filtering, we might as well support 24 or 32 bit textures along with 8 bit.

instead of swizzling down to 16 bit, we can keep the 24 bit data. but i think that will kill voodoo support and we don't want that to happen now do we ;)
Title: 800x600
Post by: EdrickV on June 09, 2003, 03:12:00 pm
Quote
Originally posted by PhReAk
well the image code converts an indexed image into a 24 bit bitmap in memory and then swizzles it into a 16 bit 1555 (ABGR) bitmap.


Ohhhkay, why is the game converting an 8-bit image into 24-bit in the first place? Why not just convert it to 16-bit if that's what it's going to use? :) Doesn't sound very effecient. As far as Voodoos, I doubt they would suffer if DirectX/OpenGL code was changed (since people with a Voodoo are likely using Glide anyways and can't use OpenGL) if the Glide code still works.
Title: 800x600
Post by: phreak on June 09, 2003, 03:20:24 pm
scratch that.

it loops through every pixel and does a 8-24-16 conversion. it doesn't convert it so its a giant 24 bit bitmap.

with some persuaion we could make have it go from 8 to 24 from ogl/dx
Title: 800x600
Post by: Sandwich on June 09, 2003, 05:30:16 pm
Only advantage IMO to using anything above 16-bit images (65,536 colors) is to use 24-bit, with the extra 8-bits allocated to a greyscale 256-shade alpha (transparency) channel. Then again, how often would we be able to make use of a semi-transparent area? Perhaps allocate the 8 bits to glow maps then - that or bump maps. Either/or, doesn't matter. Was it TGA that supported 24-bit + 8-bit alpha channels?
Title: 800x600
Post by: Flaser on June 09, 2003, 07:05:19 pm
Actually 16-bit is already more than enough for almost any kind of picture you'd like to create - more colors can be created in 16-bit than what you're eye can tell from one-another.
Goind to 32 bit has only 1 major thing as Sandwich said - ituses 8 bits for transparency data.
24bit on the other hand uses 8-8 for R,G,B so it does not support transparency.

As for the whole resolution issue - higher resolution is always better since all the lines are straighter. On the other hand it always takes more power.
The later option -mappings and ect. - however would take more power IMHO.
Higher maps are good at close distances - however this one's most important for cap-ships, since the problem with them is that the textures are streched onto huge polys, and end up wiht low DPI (dot/inch) - even for 640*480 they would need better maps.
Using more textures was already mentioned.

As for multiple resolutions:

How about using vector graphics - I mean if all the HUD was done in vector graphics then it could run in any resolution, even the size of all the gagues could be fine-tuned for everyone.
However that would be a load of work and mostly new hardcoded support of 2D vector graphics.
On the other hand an outside application could be used to create the apropiate .pcx-s from vector-g. each time the resolution is changed in the launcher.
Finally high-resolution HUDs can always be scaled down in a similar method - or even in-game as it was already suggested.

As for scaling up/down I can't believe the lack of attention to certains tricks:
Any video player program does it, they simply show a pixel more times to fill up the screen. Those are the grindy - ugly looking scaleups - however there are a whole buch of blur tricks to refine that image.
DivX for instance uses such things, so does ordinary MPEG-1.
Even a 3*3 Average matrix can have good results.

I think we need a codec or video format guru who has knowledge of actually how those filters work.
Than it's only putting these filters into the code and we can even scale up .ani-s.

Actually a whole range of those filters are supported by DirectX so we simply have to acces them.

If I sound pompous, than I'm sorry.:(
I'm no DX programmer, I don't know the exact hierarchy DirectX functions and layers, I was merely commenting on things used every day in video manipulation.
Title: 800x600
Post by: Fry_Day on June 09, 2003, 11:11:15 pm
Quote

Actually 16-bit is already more than enough for almost any kind of picture you'd like to create - more colors can be created in 16-bit than what you're eye can tell from one-another.
Goind to 32 bit has only 1 major thing as Sandwich said - ituses 8 bits for transparency data.
24bit on the other hand uses 8-8 for R,G,B so it does not support transparency.

That's just plain wrong - they didn't set the number 16.7 million colors completely arbitrarily. the human eye CAN differentiate much more than 65536 colors, ranging to at least a few hundred thousand different shades (Something that is based on actual tests), and since there are only 15 bits for the color textures, there are only 32768 different colors.

Of course, the main advantage of 32bit is actually that since you have more color precision, when using transparency and other effects, you lose less data (For example, when running in 16-bit, you can often see lots of pixels with wrong colors due to running out of enough precision in particle effects in some games), but of course, that has nothing to do with textures. On the other hand, I'm not sure, but multitexturing (which doesn't write to the framebuffer before doing a blending stage) might depend on texture bit-depth, though I'm not sure about it at all.
Title: 800x600
Post by: Sandwich on June 10, 2003, 12:58:12 am
Well either way, I've seen plenty of semi- and not so recent games with graphics options for 16 or 32 bit rendering, as well as 16 or 32 bit textures. How difficult would providing an such option be?
Title: 800x600
Post by: EdrickV on June 10, 2003, 02:29:02 am
The game actually has a 32-bit color depth option it looks for. That dates back to the original FS2 source code. (And the launcher I built a while ago includes that in it's graphics mode list.) I'm not sure if it's actually used for anything though. The main thing being talked about here is 32-bit textures which is a different issue.
That "32 bit" setting is ignored for Glide BTW, it's still checked for and will set a variable to 32 but that variable won't get passed to the graphics init function when Glide is selected, thus my launcher didn't include a 32-bit Glide mode. (Which makes since as the cards don't support 32-bit mode.)
Title: 800x600
Post by: karajorma on June 10, 2003, 02:51:25 am
IIRC the human eye can differentiate between about 1 million colours.
Title: 800x600
Post by: RandomTiger on June 10, 2003, 03:01:10 am
OK, I have a great deal of respect for anyone who can make something look as good as you guys do with 256 colours but I think you'll find that using 32 bit colour makes it a damn sight easier.

Secondly you do realise 64 bit colour will probably be the norm for gamers in a few years.

D3D FS2 currently uses 16 bit textures but renders the scene in 32 bit. DirectX has some nice bits of code to let you read in GTA's and JPG's into 16 or 32 bit textures in one line of code. I had this implemented in the DX8 code but took it out (god knows why). I'll post the code and perhaps UP can put it back in.

Phreak, dont let D3D hold you back, go for it.
Title: 800x600
Post by: Flaser on June 10, 2003, 07:39:57 am
64bit?
Unless you're putting multiple textures into a single file I don't see the point.
Even 24bit seems enough 2^8*2^8*2^8=2^24 colors, that's 16.777.216 colors - 16.7 million is more than enough.
Title: 800x600
Post by: Fry_Day on June 10, 2003, 12:05:39 pm
Flaser, actually, 64 bit gives 16-bit FP (floating point) precision for every color channel, which is a great deal of help when using any sotr of per-pixel effect, since the dynamic range of colors is no longer in the 0.0-1.0 range, meaning you don't have to fear overflows during computations. of course, it isn't applicable to textures, really, which are just fine with 24bit + alpha, but for a framebuffer and internal calculations? It's heaven.

Edit: The best example you can see for a lack of dynamic range, even with 32-bit colors, is gamma. If you set the gamma really high, you'll see that darker pixels tend to be green. With FP colors, you'll be able to set any reasonable gamma without that problem.
Title: 800x600
Post by: Flaser on June 10, 2003, 12:51:35 pm
Now I see what you mean, and it's entirely different from what I thougt.
This is no longer a simple 64-bit color description.
Title: 800x600
Post by: RandomTiger on June 11, 2003, 03:08:56 am
At the end of the day 32 bit is very desirable but since all the data is 256 colour pcx only a crazy man will remove support for it.

Conclusion: Lets have best of both worlds.

As for the res things my experiments continue, but I expect I may need a new font bitmap to solve some edge problems.
Title: 800x600
Post by: MLeoDaalder on December 07, 2003, 11:26:18 am
Hello,

And sorry to "bump" this thread. I just recently was able to acquire the game.

And I just like to give my 2 cents in this matter, I don't know if it has been solved yet, I am still a newbie at FS2and I haven't read all of it yet, but I can do programming (if you look at my site you will see that I am programming a game of my own).

I have  a Diamond Viper v770 Ultra 64MB and I would really want to run the game anything other than 640x480, simply because that resolution has some bugs with me. Like the image is shifted to the left, I could compensate for that, but then I would need to undo that the minute I stop. So I don't like that.

So I would prefer at least 800x600 or anything larger. I have run a game called Bridge Commander at 1024x756x32 with 5 models with 16000 polygons and a couple of 2024x2024 maps and all featurers on (mip mapping, glows, specular, motion blur, etc, etc). This without slowdown.

And I can run JK2 at maximum and JK3 without sound both without slowdown.

Now I think you can compensate for the crapy textures with Mip Mapping. You can do that with both OpenGL and DirectX. And if you only use that on the UI (User Interface) then even lower end systems can use them. If you also use Anti ani something then it would save you a lot of texturing problems.

It would be even better if you use that on all the textures, but such a thing should be configurable.

Now I do have an aged system, but I do hope to get a better one in Februari next year. These are my specs:
Pentium 3 550MHz
128MB RAM
Diamond Viper v770 Ultra 64MB (not updated drivers, does anyone knows where to get them?)
DirectX 9.0a

Thank you for your time,
Title: 800x600
Post by: karajorma on December 07, 2003, 11:50:41 am
What's wrong with 1024x768? Too slow?
Title: 800x600
Post by: Galemp on December 07, 2003, 12:26:30 pm
He apparently 'acquired' the game so he may not have the hi-res VP. Check out Kara's FAQ to get a file that will let you play in 1024x768.
Title: 800x600
Post by: karajorma on December 07, 2003, 12:56:33 pm
That's what I was thinking.
Title: 800x600
Post by: MLeoDaalder on December 07, 2003, 01:03:42 pm
Quote
Originally posted by karajorma
What's wrong with 1024x768? Too slow?

Didn't I just said so?
I can run 16000 polygon per model without slowdown!

And I just aquired the game, how am I supposed to know? I just found a couple of sites.

Quote
Originally posted by Galemp
He apparently 'acquired' the game so he may not have the hi-res VP. Check out Kara's FAQ to get a file that will let you play in 1024x768.
From experience from other Forums, I might want to say, I bought the game from a video store, so this is not an illegal aqcuired game!

Either way thanks I shall look for that pack. But is it compatible with SCP? Never mind, I suppose I shall see in the FAQ...
Title: 800x600
Post by: Arc on December 07, 2003, 01:14:49 pm
Quote
Originally posted by MLeoDaalder
Diamond Viper v770 Ultra 64MB (not updated drivers, does anyone knows where to get them?)


This card actually uses a nVidia RIVA TNT2 chip, you might be able to use the latest Forceware drivers from www.nvidia.com
Title: 800x600
Post by: MLeoDaalder on December 07, 2003, 01:18:36 pm
Thanks!
I shall see if it is anything usefull.
Title: 800x600
Post by: karajorma on December 07, 2003, 02:36:34 pm
If you didn't do a full install you wouldn't even get the option to play in 1024x768 which is why I asked.

If you can run other games in 1024x768 fine then the problem is most likey that something is wrong with your set up (in which case we should try to troubleshoot that first before asking the SCP coders to work on something that might not have been needed.)
I've played FS2 on a TNT2 set up and it ran fine in 1024x768 so it doesn't sound like your set up is underpowered or anything. Sounds like a driver problem most likely to me.
Title: 800x600
Post by: MLeoDaalder on December 07, 2003, 02:47:41 pm
Well I checked my disk and I have a feeling that the shop decieved me.

And I am looking for drivers now.