Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => FS2 Open Coding - The Source Code Project (SCP) => Topic started by: Rodo on September 18, 2011, 09:22:03 pm
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thehe :yes:
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:jaw:
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You, sir, are my new hero. Best of luck!
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Haha, he hasen't done anything yet and heads are exploding. Go man go!
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r u ****ing srsly?
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Oh man !
(http://strangebeaver.com/gallery/albums/uploads/memes/icame/i-came-ghostbuster.jpg)
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(http://i.imgur.com/QrFlD.jpg)
u mad, bro
If you get this done, you must be some kind of... savant. You casually swan along and add supermegaawesome where there was once nothing.
...You aren't John Carmack, are you? Or some evil clone thereof?
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Awesome! How are they going to work?
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Awesome! How are they going to work?
Magic
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Awesome! How are they going to work?
ValaMagic
Fixed that for you.
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omg Valathil, good luck and I look forward to seeing the results.
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I Knew That! Keep it up guys!
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Awesome! How are they going to work?
(http://images.memegenerator.net/instances/400x/10106196.jpg)
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Well, what kind of shadows... stencil shadows? shadow maps?
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The awesome kind of shadows. Those that work under FSO.
How could you imagine any better kind of shadows ?
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What about godrays? :p
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What about godrays? :p
:drolls:
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What about godrays? :p
Don't steal my pipe dreams, Spoon! :p
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**** just got real.
Good luck!
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(http://verydemotivational.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/demotivational-posters-thats-right.jpg)
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This thread now is my browser welcome page.
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il believe it when i see something other than lame internet memes.
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Valathil is doing it, that's enough for me to believe it.
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I'm not exactly sure what I'm looking at, but I get the feeling it's something really cool.
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It's Valathil.
I can't really imagine any way it could not be something at least really cool.
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i dont have any doubt that he could pull it off. i was more disturbed by the large number of bull**** posts on a buisness as usual part of the forum, as if kiddies wanted to bolster their post count.
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i dont have any doubt that he could pull it off. i was more disturbed by the large number of bull**** posts on a buisness as usual part of the forum, as if kiddies wanted to bolster their post count.
:nono:
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Speaking of godrays...
I'm not sure what it would take for FSO, but I know Oblivion was able to get them pretty much just by adding a shader.
(http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/578929766431974474/83DB19F52B3628559D0E58BFDF5391D82B394DA0/)
I don't suppose it would be that "easy" would it?
Swifty, you can have that one. :D
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i dont have any doubt that he could pull it off. i was more disturbed by the large number of bull**** posts on a buisness as usual part of the forum, as if kiddies wanted to bolster their post count.
Please, stop derailing this thread. We're having a perfectly sane discussion here.
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I bet he's going to use soft particles for it.
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il believe it when i see something other than lame internet memes.
BELIEVE IT
http://imagebin.org/173114
i'll believe you once we have both self-shadows and cast shadows :p
also, i take it that light intensity doesnt do **** all yet to affect the shadows, its just either "fully lit" or "fully dark" with that nasty iffy horriclippy lack-of-bias on the transition area, right? :p
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If Val can't do it, it probably can't be done.
We're all rooting for you! ;7
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the above image posted by Val = realtime shadow maps being generated in-game (I'm 99% sure)
As long as the shaders render the glowmaps *after* applying the shadows, this will be absolutely perfect
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Sooo old tilemapped hangars gonna be dark as hell. Time to upgrade some models.
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Sooo old tilemapped hangars gonna be dark as hell. Time to upgrade some models.
Hangars should have baked lighting via glow maps in the first place. If this enables us to make enclosed spaces actually dark, instead of the one side of the cavern facing the light source being inexplicably lit up, it will be an awesome improvement for hangars as well.
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Sooo old tilemapped hangars gonna be dark as hell. Time to upgrade some models.
Hangars should have baked lighting via glow maps in the first place. If this enables us to make enclosed spaces actually dark, instead of the one side of the cavern facing the light source being inexplicably lit up, it will be an awesome improvement for hangars as well.
Wing commander Saga's gonna be :3 SUH-WEEEEEEEEET.
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Sooo old tilemapped hangars gonna be dark as hell. Time to upgrade some models.
Hangars should have baked lighting via glow maps in the first place. If this enables us to make enclosed spaces actually dark, instead of the one side of the cavern facing the light source being inexplicably lit up, it will be an awesome improvement for hangars as well.
Wing commander Saga's gonna be :3 SUH-WEEEEEEEEET.
Depends on a) Valathil finishing this and b) the WCSaga team being able to copy/incorporate his efforts.
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It'll either be a script/shader/incorporated into nightly builds/trunk/whatever. And a glowmapped hangar subsystem.
I'm confident Mister Buzzkill :p
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Just being realistic here. I have no idea how much the WCS codebase has diverged from FSO trunk and I know there have been a LOT of changes on our side after the fork. I would be somewhat surprised if a WCS build could run a mission built with current FSO in mind.
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More babies must be named after this man.
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Who was that naysayer again? :lol:
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Wow! Consider my mind blown away. :snipe: Excellent work! :yes:
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Wow! Consider my mind blown away. :snipe: Excellent work! :yes:
BOOM HEADSHOT
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Keep it up bro!
We'll soon be able to make some spot light turett to enlight the surrounding!
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I usually prefer not to make spammy over-reaction posts, but my actual out-load words on viewing that video were, "wait wait wait wait WHOA WHOA WHOA." Just sayin'.
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so far, so good.
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ngharrrfflllrbb
Valathil, please don't ever disappear from the internet. We need you.
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BELIEVE IT
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2E1Sr-ud5zk&hd=1
:jaw:
You're a god *___*
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Awesome work! It made me think back of the impressive ship renders from FS1 in particular. To think i'd see the day. I look forward to see this in game on my screen ;)
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so what method are you using? depth fail stencil shadows?
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I'm simply speechless. I'm out of words to say.
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I love it.
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Very impressive. :) I look forward to seeing how this goes!
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Back to topic: I just wonder if there's anything that Valathil couldn't make....
Geomods perhaps? ;7
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Back to topic: I just wonder if there's anything that Valathil couldn't make....
Geomods perhaps? ;7
:nono:
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Back to topic: I just wonder if there's anything that Valathil couldn't make....
Well... I know a feature that might help out a lot...
SSAO/HDAO, for breaking up the tiled textures of the capships. Although I think baked lightmaps can't hurt either.
Just to give ships more depth.
http://img6.imagebanana.com/img/3r9qq3id/fso_ssao_hdao.jpg
(or for more win with shadows: http://img7.imagebanana.com/img/k5pqlxl5/fso_ssao_sh_ftw.jpg)
Of course it's more interesting for capships, to give them a slightly better sense of scale.
http://img7.imagebanana.com/img/44210u5u/fso_ssao_hdao2.jpg
That's for later though... I think finalizing the shadow implementation will take a while. ;)
Impressive work... as always... :yes:
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so what method are you using? depth fail stencil shadows?
Depth fail shadow mapping. I'm now concentrating on getting ships to shadow other ships and getting point light shadows. Depending on the results i may need to either limit the shadow maximum count, move to projective shadow mapping for point lights if resolution problems start to appear or go full out without much performance hit and this game will blow your socks away.
I won't accept any titles other than "Wizard" or "The Wizard" or "Mister Wizard" for Valathil
Zomg, shadows
Yes "The Wizard" would be really nice to have. But im not begging for it.
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c'mon Valathil! post some eyecandy! (a new capship vid ia apprecaited) :D
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Depth fail shadow mapping. I'm now concentrating on getting ships to shadow other ships and getting point light shadows. Depending on the results i may need to either limit the shadow maximum count, move to projective shadow mapping for point lights if resolution problems start to appear or go full out without much performance hit and this game will blow your socks away.
Wow, you want to add shadows to point lights?
That's might look pretty neat. :)
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:jaw: Blown away, sir. Are you sure that's sugar in your coffee and not powdered unicorn horn? There's some serious magic going on here.
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not sure if point lights would be worth the expense, but can't hurt to try.
also, shadow maps? so not making volumes? that is somewhat disappointing, because that could be used to make cool volumetric effects in the nebula.
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DaBrain, Please spend more of your time&effort helping Valathil with that awesome shield effect (http://youtu.be/4uW106Vxqf4) :D
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DaBrain, Please spend more of your time&effort helping Valathil with that awesome shield effect (http://youtu.be/4uW106Vxqf4) :D
de wat?
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Nice shadows. If we're going to try and add shadows to point lights, what about tube lights?
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DaBrain, Please spend more of your time&effort helping Valathil with that awesome shield effect (http://youtu.be/4uW106Vxqf4) :D
de wat?
Heat distortion, Shadows, Shield distortion... these upgrades are so ****ing great my mind has trouble to compute...
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wtf why didn't i look in here right after i got back home this weekend what is this i don't even hnnnnng
Also how in the world do we keep getting people like Valathil who come out of nowhere and add multiple amazing things to the engine. It's like the SCP puts out some sort of siren call.
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wtf why didn't i look in here right after i got back home this weekend what is this i don't even hnnnnng
Also how in the world do we keep getting people like Valathil who come out of nowhere and add multiple amazing things to the engine. It's like the SCP puts out some sort of siren call.
I dont know, but I am extremely grateful for it
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Aren't we all? :D
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Oh yes. This community has some very awesome mods, and these awesome mods are probably what gets people's attention. :)
BTW is the "depth fail shadow mapping" that Valathil's talking about Creative's patented volume shadowing technique (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_volume#Depth_fail) or is it something totally different?
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So, when is the test build coming up?
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So, when is the test build coming up?
C'mon.. you know the answer to this. When it's ready.
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So, when is the test build coming up?
lets just be patient, we've waited for shadows for I don't know how many years now, a few more days/weeks/months won't kill anybody, let the guy do his thing ;)
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Oh yes. This community has some very awesome mods, and these awesome mods are probably what gets people's attention. :)
BTW is the "depth fail shadow mapping" that Valathil's talking about Creative's patented volume shadowing technique (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_volume#Depth_fail) or is it something totally different?
1. Shadow mapping is not shadow volumes.
2. Software patents are stupid and evil.
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No words... poet needed.
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I could watch those rotating submodels all day.
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The immersion factor just shot up about 1,000 fold. Very, very, cool! :yes:
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I want to see the Shivan Comm Node in the next preview video.
Fantastic work. :yes:
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I'm certainly impressed. I look forward to seeing this in game when it hits the main repository.
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Suddenly, the retail Collie looks really, really, really good. Everything seen here is perfect.
Now do the HTL version. :nod:
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Yep. No longer looks like a 1990s, or even a 2000s game.
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Suddenly, the retail Collie looks really, really, really good.
No it doesn't! :P
Also...WOW!
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eyesex
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again, all this stuff is outstanding...can't wait to see them in game.
also,do you think next time we'll see a FS2 mission with shadows?
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Is it only self-shadowing so far, or do ships also cast shadows on others?
Regardless of the answer, truly awesome work :yes:
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Valathil.
You're doing it wrooooooooong.
If you want to show shadows on rotating subsystems, there's only one truly worthy candidate, and you know it.
Optirayana !
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Previously I was joking about the engine looking like this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwHioRqlhQk) in the future but it's becoming a lot closer than I imagined.
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Laphit?, nice sliding effects.
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This is gorgeous :yes:
How does the performance scale with the polycount of the model?
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DAT
ASS SHADOW
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Is it only self-shadowing so far, or do ships also cast shadows on others?
I could be wrong here, but I think the current implementation is just the self shadowing at the moment as that (seems) to be the easiest to manage at the moment.
I forget if multi-light source handling has been mentioned or not, but I suspect that will add some complexity to it.
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IIRC shadows from point lights were mentioned.
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Just... a random question here.
Is it possible to make alpha blended particles cast shadows? :nervous:
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Is it possible to make alpha blended particles cast shadows? :nervous:
Don't think so... this implementation works on a polygon basis.
But particles are rendered on a square, so you'd probably end up with the shadow of that square instead of the per-pixel alpha blended shadow you're thinking of. Would be cool though...
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Note, there's no lighting applied to particles. You'd end up with a glowing thing casting shadow.
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Note, there's no lighting applied to particles. You'd end up with a glowing thing casting shadow.
Not applied TO the particles, but shadows don't require that. Of course glowing particles done with additive blending wouldn't cast shadows, which is why I specified alpha-blended particles - such as smoke trails, flak puffs etc.
If there's the particle's plane, it can cast a projection. And if the particle's texture has alpha, it should be possible to also project said alpha channel so that it's aligned with the shadow, yes?
If so, then it would be just a matter of computing power to multiply the projected rectangular shadows by the alpha channel, resulting in a shadow that in shape corresponds to the particle's opaque parts. If you want to get fancy you could also convolute the final shadow shape to blur the edges, but that's even further addition to computational requirements.
The biggest problem I see here is that there are ****-tons of particles to be handled so it could pose a huge problem performance-wise. Still, it would be rather righteous to see a fighter spewing dark smoke skim on the surface of a destroyer and have the smoketrail cast a shadow... or to see the bombs or missiles impact a ship with their smoke trails casting shadows to the ship's surface. :D
But, I'm getting ahead of things, as the system currently only seems to support self-shading. Casting shadows on other objects needs to be done first, and obviously getting things to work for 3D objects is of supreme priority compared to particle shadows.
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IRL, smoke doesn't cast too much shadow, unless it's really thick (which would require so many particles that them alone would murder the framerate).
Also, particles are always facing the player, so it may not be so easy to project the them onto a ship's surface as a shadow.
Honestly, even ArmA II doesn't seem to simulate smoke shadows (or maybe the effect is too subtle for me to notice). Maybe in a few years, but today, it might be too performance intensive.
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i think having shadows in ships and installations is enough for a lot of years... i think the main issue is the performance hit,and one day,freespace 2 will face the need to have multi cpu support... this will be the king of improvements :)
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IRL, smoke doesn't cast too much shadow, unless it's really thick (which would require so many particles that them alone would murder the framerate).
Also, particles are always facing the player, so it may not be so easy to project the them onto a ship's surface as a shadow.
Honestly, even ArmA II doesn't seem to simulate smoke shadows (or maybe the effect is too subtle for me to notice). Maybe in a few years, but today, it might be too performance intensive.
Smoke casts shadows just like clouds.
Which is another aspect of why I suggested this - when we get properly done clouds working, it would be nice for them to cast shadows...
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Valathil is giving us an awesome feature as it is... and it's still very early from what I understand. Let's not go and ask him to shoot for the moon all of a sudden.
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Valathil is giving us an awesome feature as it is... and it's still very early from what I understand. Let's not go and ask him to shoot for the moon all of a sudden.
That is true, which is why mine was more of a random question rather than a feature request.
My hunch says the number of shadows would become too high with particle shadows anyway for current hardware, but it's just an assumption and I'd love to know if there's any chance to get such a feature working, someday.
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...Let's not go and ask him to shoot for the moon all of a sudden.
nice figure of speach here ;)
ps. hi folks! recently rediscovered Freespace with all the fancy modifications. You people are doing some wonderfull stuff. And I'm off to the new people thread for a proper "you guys are so great, let me hang out with you" post :)
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If I wasn't having misgivings about how kosher it would be, I'd throw this up in a news post right now.
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Smoke casts shadows just like clouds.
In case of clouds, they're scripted, so maybe scripting could be used to create their shadows.
As for smoke, in most cases, the effect is too subtle too notice in combat. It just wouldn't be worth the performance hit.
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No, Dragon, I am afraid that's impossible. For each light source, there is exactly one shadow map, and it's NOT practical to add particle effects (of any kind) into that pipeline. Adding the further complication of having to evaluate the particles' texture to determine how and where it casts shadows only makes it even more impractical.
So, I think this will not happen.
We will now return to more awesome discussions.
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I never said that cloud shadows should consist of shadows of particles themselves. I was thinking about a more hack-ish workaround (like a separately defined shadow map, or a model roughly the shape of the bottom of the cloud, casting shadow, but actually invisible). Clouds are non-standard feature for FS, so I'd expect a non-standard solution for giving them shadows.
Besides, this is indeed an empty discussion. We have neither real clouds nor shadows, though both seem close.
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Remember that those particles are not volumes, having a light from other than observer's direction would result in wrong shadow appearance (the shadow visible on surface would have same shape as smoke you see, even though it would logically appear different for the observer at light source).
Besides, the only place where this kind of shadow would be notable is in nebula, where you can do this quite cheap using something else.
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It's interesting that people would suggest that particles cast shadows. If I'm not mistaken, even the most technical games out there today don't render smoke shadows. Is there any particular reason that lots of people would like to see it implemented (aside from cloud shadows)?
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I think most are just day dreaming of what could be possible.
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I think most are just day dreaming of what could be possible.
This. :p
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Dunno about you guys, but I'm just interested in seeing shadows casted from one ship to another. :drevil:
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Dunno about you guys, but I'm just interested in seeing self shadowing in a working build with other improvements added later. :nervous:
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Dunno about you guys, but I'm just interested in seeing self shadowing in a working build with other improvements added later. :nervous:
That would be perfectly acceptable to have as a public test build.
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Dunno about you guys, but I'm just interested in seeing self shadowing in a working build with other improvements added later. :nervous:
Especially since that brings FSO into parity with HW2's engine in that department at least :p
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Sry guys still no Testbuild today. Modelview matrices are still giving me problems and somehow i managed to sleep for 22 hours today so yeaaah.
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i managed to sleep for 22 hours today so yeaaah.
Huzzah! :yes:
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i managed to sleep for 22 hours today so yeaaah.
Means yer workin' too hard. :P
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Wow, that's one heck of a great preview. I should definitely test this out.. In fact I shall! I really want to see what the results are like. And performance? ;) No worries here. Great work as usual Valathil, things like this impresses me to no end.
EDIT: Whoops, i'm a noob once more. What do I do with the PATCH file? As I just tested it in the first FS2 mission, but the ships light up bright pink when shooting/firing past them.
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I literally shouted **** YES when I saw the video. Val, you're our hero.
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Looking good Valathil, will have to try it later.
EDIT: Whoops, i'm a noob once more. What do I do with the PATCH file? As I just tested it in the first FS2 mission, but the ships light up bright pink when shooting/firing past them.
Ignore it. Its for the other coders and those that know how to compile the engine.
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I don't post very often, but this is definitely worth a big THANKS! This looks awesome!
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Looking good Valathil, will have to try it later.
EDIT: Whoops, i'm a noob once more. What do I do with the PATCH file? As I just tested it in the first FS2 mission, but the ships light up bright pink when shooting/firing past them.
Ignore it. Its for the other coders and those that know how to compile the engine.
Any idea what may cause the issue I have instead? The transports light up red and bright pink when I shoot them or past them. It seems to only happen with this build as reverting to my usual build works as usual.
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http://youtu.be/8E3a_RL2XkE?hd=1
Geomod next?
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I'm still mopping my drool up off the floor. Seriously. So. Much. Awesome.
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YES!! YES!!
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Any idea what may cause the issue I have instead? The transports light up red and bright pink when I shoot them or past them. It seems to only happen with this build as reverting to my usual build works as usual.
My guess would be this:
this build and the patch DISABLES external shaders so it always takes the shadow shader.
Excellent preview Valathil, it shows everything we want to see. I can't wait for the nightly. In the mean time I'm super curious about how asteroid fields look. Anybody into making a vid? ;7
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Checked it out, it works and looks awesome.
Can't wait for it to be commited to a nightly.
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Any idea what may cause the issue I have instead? The transports light up red and bright pink when I shoot them or past them. It seems to only happen with this build as reverting to my usual build works as usual.
My guess would be this:
this build and the patch DISABLES external shaders so it always takes the shadow shader.
Ah, you're right. Shadows DO work, but the red/pink seem to sadly remain. I hope that this can be changed to work with all the other shaders (Unless i'm the only one having the issue?).
(Also, a quick dirty recording to show what I mean: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoLfIpcRF10)
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Out of curiousity, what graphics card are you running? I haven't had a chance to test yet but I'm running a Radeon 4870, I'll see if it has similar issues.
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Out of curiousity, what graphics card are you running? I haven't had a chance to test yet but I'm running a Radeon 4870, I'll see if it has similar issues.
Nvidia Geforce GT425 (Optimus, switchable graphics for laptops). Generally a great card. Tried it with the on-board Intel graphics from the i5 460 processor but the game doesn't seem to run when it does (Also strange).
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I think this give a nice disco look however :)
TEsted on an ati 6970 : no problem so far
Would an animated skybox affect the light source?
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And well intel is historically bad at just about everything graphics related, so that's not so surprising. But yeah, IIRC these were implemented on a Geforce so I'd think it's unlikely the issue lies there.
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Testing away, now that I've collected myself after the mental BSoD these videos have given me.
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I've seen lighting problems like that before, it's caused by the shaders (can't remember exact details of the issue though). It should be a separate issue from the shadows, though, as when I last saw it, shadows were nowhere in sight.
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the only problem i've had is that the framerates were abysmal. BP2 intro mission dipped down to 15 fps regularily.
AMD 7750 X2 @2.7GHz, 8 GB DDR2 800 RAM, nvidia GTX260 896MB, 216sp version.
i am however, loving the living **** out of it :D
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Lulz.
Hope shadows find their way into Antipodes, because nightlies performance is really bad sometimes.
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the only problem i've had is that the framerates were abysmal. BP2 intro mission dipped down to 15 fps regularily.
AMD 7750 X2 @2.7GHz, 8 GB DDR2 800 RAM, nvidia GTX260 896MB, 216sp version.
i am however, loving the living **** out of it :D
I'm sure that'll be better when BP releases an optimized ship-pack... Unoptimized ships + shadows seems like a bad call.
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I think this give a nice disco look however :)
TEsted on an ati 6970 : no problem so far
Would an animated skybox affect the light source?
Skyboxes neither receive nor generate light, so no.
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If anyone had told me a year ago FSO would have self-shadows and even cast-shadows by today, I would have laughed at him for months.
Then came Valathil, he saw the code, and he won HLP.
Kudos, good sir :yes:
Now all I need is a new rig to handle all this prettiness.
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I guess polycount will now matter really hard. 8 FPS instead of 90 in the beginnign of BP2 intro. Even if this is an early stage of development, I'm afraid i'd have to turn off nearly everything except shadows if I wanted do have them at reasonable quality. Will look nice on vids though :(
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I guess polycount will now matter really hard. 8 FPS instead of 90 in the beginnign of BP2 intro. Even if this is an early stage of development, I'm afraid i'd have to turn off nearly everything except shadows if I wanted do have them at reasonable quality. Will look nice on vids though :(
its a problem that was going to crop up at some point. shadows are a fantastic advancmeant for the fso engine. but with the detail that the comunity puts into the ships and assets they create we will see allot of these frame drops
it really is a pity multi core would require pritty much rebuilding the engine
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Shadwos are great but on my spec, the mesh vanished sometimes.
(http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/577809585617014987/ED29F7F8F2D63798D1B74E774D147962B9F68DF3/)
(http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/577809585617003400/2CF8B5F593695E8F59502F5BBC4E65E0047E6D8D/)
(http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/577809585617009190/7A4C8F57F7FFE5218942B420837058C749672C6B/)
(http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/577809585617022375/DB0772B6A360980CC4E0DB230D0B105322AEECF2/)
(http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/577809585617025622/65C9CA0933CFFBFE361A4E9C7F9E659F8DBCA79D/)
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I guess polycount will now matter really hard. 8 FPS instead of 90 in the beginnign of BP2 intro. Even if this is an early stage of development, I'm afraid i'd have to turn off nearly everything except shadows if I wanted do have them at reasonable quality. Will look nice on vids though :(
its a problem that was going to crop up at some point. shadows are a fantastic advancmeant for the fso engine. but with the detail that the comunity puts into the ships and assets they create we will see allot of these frame drops
it really is a pity multi core would require pritty much rebuilding the engine
This is shadows version 0.3 people. Based on Valathil's comments in IRC, he's still just trying to get everything working reliably. I'm sure optimization of the effect will come after that.
Also, BP2 Intro is a really bad example to give. Unoptimized models plus this sort of effect is going to produce dead frame rates without a doubt.
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do you think that with other shaders enabled the FPS drops more than now?
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Do the subspace missions have a primary light source in them, or do they just rely on ambient light? Not having a sun might be doing something nasty to the shadow system... :nervous:
And, actually, I get about the same frame rates from the BP2 intro, shadows or no shadows... when the camera zooms to the big furball towards Jupiter, frame rates drop to about 10 anyways. That's likely because my system is heavily CPU/memory bus bottleneck limited; the GPU can deal with the shadows, the slowdowns in my end are caused by other stuff.
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Do the subspace missions have a primary light source in them, or do they just rely on ambient light? Not having a sun might be doing something nasty to the shadow system... :nervous:
IIRC, you always need to have at least one sun in a mish. There should be a sun at the end of the subspace tunnel.
Also, randomly, I can't seriously believe it. Self-shadowing = outstanding. Ships shadowing each other = wait wat how
What is this sorcery.
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I guess polycount will now matter really hard. 8 FPS instead of 90 in the beginnign of BP2 intro. Even if this is an early stage of development, I'm afraid i'd have to turn off nearly everything except shadows if I wanted do have them at reasonable quality. Will look nice on vids though :(
What if we added support for using a lower LOD for shadow map generation? I have no idea how possible that is (Valathil would have to answer), but it would allow some tradeoff between shadow fidelity and performance. Basically, get less detailed shadows (but that render faster).
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I guess polycount will now matter really hard. 8 FPS instead of 90 in the beginnign of BP2 intro. Even if this is an early stage of development, I'm afraid i'd have to turn off nearly everything except shadows if I wanted do have them at reasonable quality. Will look nice on vids though :(
What if we added support for using a lower LOD for shadow map generation? I have no idea how possible that is (Valathil would have to answer), but it would allow some tradeoff between shadow fidelity and performance. Basically, get less detailed shadows (but that render faster).
This would only work on shadows between ships. Self-shadowing would create massive errors.
Anyways, it's a massive point in FSO history. Graphic cards will only get better, and now FSO is ready for what the future might bring to it. When this feature gets integrated into a more stable version, I must show it to some of my friends. And I'm betting that it will spawn a new age of interested people as well.
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This would only work on shadows between ships. Self-shadowing would create massive errors.
Unless you have experience getting shadows to work.. I suggest leaving these distinctions to Valathil...
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mjn, it's basic geometrical deduction, for which I'm more than qualified thank you very much. If you make a shadow map of a LOD1 and imprint it on a LOD0, you'll get every single detail of LOD0 that isn't on LOD1 wrong in its shadowing, creating a mess of an image. I'm sure that Valathil will agree with me.
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Shadows in FSO. We truly live in great times.
Next they'll announce motion blur or a build that makes beer pour from the screen and I wouldn't be surprised.
Where do I send the poet?
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it really is a pity multi core would require pritty much rebuilding the engine
This has pretty much nothing to do the with CPU. Shadows are almost completely exclusively limited by the GPU.
IIRC, you always need to have at least one sun in a mish. There should be a sun at the end of the subspace tunnel.
There is usually two suns in a subspace mission, one at each end of the tunnel, so that you get the sunglare/whiteout when you look down the tunnel.
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I didn't have much time to test the build, but I get the same dark ships when I go into the tech room.
Performance is pretty abysmal all around (WiH intro is 2-3 fps down from 20-30), but I have a ****ty 3650 so I wasn't expecting much. The good news is, the shadows are working, unlike thruster distortions.
Quick Q: Is there any optimization implemented at all yet? Like, LOD's, culling, and any other magic that would keep my game playable with shadows on? :P (Please say no, because then there is still hope for me)
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Valathil.
This man. This man deserves a medal. I need a general, or an admiral, someone of rank, quick.
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**** protocol either way, I'm making this a news post at some point. :D
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Valathil.
This man. This man deserves a medal. I need a general, or an admiral, someone of rank, quick.
Ooh ooh I'm a commodore in FS1!
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http://youtu.be/8E3a_RL2XkE?hd=1
Geomod next?
Very impressive.
Other than the tech room wonkiness, it works in game pretty well with minimal framerate impact on my system.
[attachment deleted by ninja]
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Geeze.. it's amazing what shadows do to add realism to the look of the game...
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One thing that should be noted is that, at the moment, shadows are rendered into a 4096 by 4096 rendertarget. Which gives great quality, but is also much, much larger than is sensible.
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Might there be a way to eventually set up a "shadow quality" type of slider in the launcher, or using another method? I ask because on my own system, there is minimal impact on performance. Others with lower end hardware would certainly benefit with something less than the 4096*4096 you mention, but those of us with more powerful hardware might be just fine the way it is now, optimizations notwithstanding.
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This is definitely going to happen; but as has been said quite a few times, this is the first working implementation. The one that will get into trunk eventually will be faster and more configurable.
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Oh forgot to try into dense asteroid field :nervous:
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Those BSG shots are beautiful.
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Worked and ran nearly perfectly here with everything turned up to max on BP2's intro. It was glorious.
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I cannot see shadows in that cockpit. It is caused by the texture, right? Or am I blind?
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There's not much in that cockpit that could cast a shadow.
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Cockpits should be "highlighted" with a glowmap anyway. Otherwise, you won't be able to see the instruments. It also seems that in these shots, ambient light is pretty high and sun is shining from "above" the cockpit.
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Dammit, I'm going to have to try this stuff out... but I haven't been keeping up-to-date with all the updated files and stuff :doubt:
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Shadows work fine overhere on a HD5750 and look great. Performance hit is quite hard (about 50%) but that's to be expected at this stage. What I did notice is that sometimes I see a clear drop in the fps counter while at other times the fps counter shows no drop but the game is extremely sluggish...either the fps counter shows a wrong number or the hitches and stuttering aren't fps related. Will check with msi afterburner aswell.
double checked with msi afterburner and radeon pro. It's a bit of a placebo it seems, whenever the game starts turning sluggish there actually is a slight drop in fps, just not as much that I noticed it in the fps counter. For me the game starts feeling really sluggish when the fps drop from 70 to 60fps. I suppose that's part of the "at your own risk" warning ;)
Great job sofar!
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For me the game starts feeling really sluggish when the fps drop from 70 to 60fps.
Some us are just hoping to be able to run the final release at all.
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Yeah I understand :) Do note though that I'm not a fps junky, normally 60 fps is more then fine, in this case however the fps counter says 60 but it feels like 10 fps. I was only mentioning it because Valathil specifically asked about performance on ati cards in this very early build.
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(http://img839.imageshack.us/img839/325/screen0067.png)
(http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/5126/screen0069.png)
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OMFG the shadoooowwwnessssss is amazing, once again top Val
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Making my favorite FS-ship even more awesome.
(http://s14.directupload.net/images/111006/hnf4iu5y.jpg)
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Cockpits should be "highlighted" with a glowmap anyway. Otherwise, you won't be able to see the instruments. It also seems that in these shots, ambient light is pretty high and sun is shining from "above" the cockpit.
There is no need to put a glowmap on the entire cockpit, only the parts of the instruments that are illuminated. In my Wings cockpits glows apply only to MFD and other digital displays, warning lights, and the lettering/numbers on analog gauges, not the cockpit structure.
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For me the game starts feeling really sluggish when the fps drop from 70 to 60fps.
What? Most monitors can't even display more than 60 fps.
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Making my favorite FS-ship even more awesome.
(http://s14.directupload.net/images/111006/hnf4iu5y.jpg)
Looks friggen sick. Cannot wait for a commit.
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Well, seems like selfshadowing leaves sometimes zfight artifacts (try :v: herc for example) and FPS drops are quite notable (used :v: content, without any MVP addons that is), and just looking at wings of seraphs made FPS go way too down.
It's also nice to see you already set up things so you can extend support for other than just "sun" lighting in the future. Hope you won't run into any unexpected problems and will just have fun in enhancing the game.
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Making my favorite FS-ship even more awesome.
(http://s14.directupload.net/images/111006/hnf4iu5y.jpg)
Looks like an offline render. Really impressive, Valathil!
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What mod is that?
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Mr_Blastman: That would be Blue Planet, likely WiH test shots.
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What? Most monitors can't even display more than 60 fps.
That doesn't stop games from running faster then 60fps ;) Like I said it clearly isn't running @60 fps eventhough the fps counter says so (it stutters like 10 fps before returning normal again).
Some great shadow examples in this thread. I also noticed the extremely dark images in the tech room, however after playing a mission and returning to the tech room everything seems fine.
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I can see shadows are not applied to debris pieces and all light sources. Are they going to be or would it be too much computing for reasonable performance/quality?
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Mr_Blastman: That would be Blue Planet, likely WiH test shots.
Ahh okay. That explains it then. I've been saving WiH for later as the first part was sooo awesome.
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Some missions with lots of rotating subsystems (such as the multitude of Mjolnirs in The King's Gambit) cause me quite a bit of lag, but other missions give me a steady 50-60 FPS. Radeon 5770 here. No bugs to speak of, other than the techroom ships appear really dark until I play a mission, then re-enter the techroom. After re-entering the techroom, all of the ships appear to be lit.
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On my specs : Athlon X2 3800+ - Geforce 8800GTS 512 - 4000 RAM I've testing few missions on Freespace port, shadows works fine.
To see how Shadows could be awesome, someone must do a video where a little cruiser is progressively "shadowed" by a bigger one (a leviathan by a collossus for example), as in SW Empire Strike Back when the executor's shad' other ISD : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjiO-63X3dM
:D
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Beautiful; well done. Rotating subobjects don't seem to cast shadows on other ships though.
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Beautiful; well done. Rotating subobjects don't seem to cast shadows on other ships though.
Really? The video shows the rotating radar dish rotating on the colossus.
Same with the nuChraybdis we have, the radar dishes cast a rotating shadow on other ships as well as itself.
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The spinning things on the Apocalypse don't cast shadows on other ships inside them for me.
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maybe it's the Apocalypse which is bugged.
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If it was only about similarly sized ships wouldn't both the Fenris in the background have shadows on them from the Orion? that said I don't know anything about the code so I don't have anything constructive to add...
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just as a side question, how many of you have tried purging .sdr files from your effects folders?
The E and myself were testing it out and the build provided by Valathil displayed shadows only if we purgified the shader files from our effects folder. (our would in this case be the TAP stuff)
From my limited testings, it overrided any vp-contained shaders just fine, just not ones floating in effects folder.
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just as a side question, how many of you have tried purging .sdr files from your effects folders?
The E and myself were testing it out and the build provided by Valathil displayed shadows only if we purgified the shader files from our effects folder. (our would in this case be the TAP stuff)
From my limited testings, it overrided any vp-contained shaders just fine, just not ones floating in effects folder.
Oh dang. I can almost guarantee that this causes my issues. I'll test and report in.
EDIT: Yup, that was it. Why does Valathil's linked built properly override external shaders though?
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I took the .sdr files out and ran it through on this Build again, those previous issues I mentioned were still occuring.
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just as a side question, how many of you have tried purging .sdr files from your effects folders?
The E and myself were testing it out and the build provided by Valathil displayed shadows only if we purgified the shader files from our effects folder. (our would in this case be the TAP stuff)
From my limited testings, it overrided any vp-contained shaders just fine, just not ones floating in effects folder.
Oh dang. I can almost guarantee that this causes my issues. I'll test and report in.
EDIT: Yup, that was it. Why does Valathil's linked built properly override external shaders though?
i have no bloody clue. i know the e compiled a ant8 build for us as soon as the patch was availible and there were no shadows, or rather, the shadows were all-covering and pervasive. nothing was out of shadow, no change even when we purged .sdr files from the effects folder. only with valathil's build did it work.
mjn: Well i dont get shadows anymore with current trunk code and vs 2010 either, only with 2011, care to elaborate? My issue is that all Ships look like they are in complete shadow in the f3 lab.
it might be tied to the above.
I took the .sdr files out and ran it through on this Build again, those previous issues I mentioned were still occuring.
What hardware are you running on? (and what issues do you have? sorry, i did not exactly follow the whole thread)
i'm assuming these (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=78329.msg1552529#msg1552529) are your issues, if so, i have no bloody clue :p
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I just built on Ant8 with the patch provided. Shadows worked after I purged the .sdr files.
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I just built on Ant8 with the patch provided. Shadows worked after I purged the .sdr files.
we didnt test much after initial release, just so you know :p
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it already has been ported to thrusters. What are you guys talking about?
That's even better! :yes:
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If it was only about similarly sized ships wouldn't both the Fenris in the background have shadows on them from the Orion?
on similarly sized or smaller ships.
:p
Yeah, we've noticed the same issue in Diaspora when CooperHawkes was making our video. The Basestars didn't cast shadows on each other.
I can also confirm that, a large space station only casts shadows on itself, but not on any of the ships docked to it or flying around it.
As you can see:
(http://img703.imageshack.us/img703/6438/screen0100.th.png) (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/703/screen0100.png/)
The fighter is lit up, despite being behind the border of shadow on the station's hull.
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Are the shadows purely processor based? If so, has SCP introduced multi-thread support? I have an i7-2600 and one of its cores runs at 100% when i run the build with shadows. The Blade itself campaign of Blue Planet went down to around 1 fps. Even my GPU, though old, runs the campaign at very high framerates. What kind of calculations are used to generate shadows?
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Shadows are generated using standard shadow mapping techniques, which run on the GPU for the most part.
No, FSO is not multithreaded.
No, we have not started work on making it so.
Yes, we get asked that a lot.
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If FSO was multithreaded, you'd see both cores pop up to 100% when running The Blade Itself. Shadows are very demanding on GPU, that's why you're getting low framerates.
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I can also confirm that, a large space station only casts shadows on itself, but not on any of the ships docked to it or flying around it.
As you can see:
(http://img703.imageshack.us/img703/6438/screen0100.th.png) (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/703/screen0100.png/)
The fighter is lit up, despite being behind the border of shadow on the station's hull.
*both squeals gleefully and cringes painfully at seeing his ship in the background*
On that matter, is a sort of size based map generation going to be implemented? Fighters casting a smaller map than say a Colossus. And I don't mean to go too deep but is a 'soft' shadow being considered :D. But what am I saying? Just having shadows itself is celebratory enough. I should go bake a cake and mark the day as "Shadow Day".
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=381Q9YC4Qow
Max settings on the shadow build, on "The Blade Itself" from BP:WiH. FRAPS brought down the framerate considerably enough for vsync to cap me at 30fps for some of the video, and 60fps for the rest (though I recorded at 29.97fps so it doesn't really matter either way).
You can see all of the graphics glitches in the video at various points as well as its performance on a high-end machine.
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And I don't mean to go too deep but is a 'soft' shadow being considered :D.
Negative!! There are no soft-shadows in space! No atmosphere to spread out the light source!
OTOH, for nebulas, planetary, and missions near stars, soft-shadows would make sense. :p
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I guess that it could be really useful if we could have some way to switch between multiple sets of shaders on a per-mission basis.
This would allow disabling thruster distortion, soft shadows and other "atmospheric" features in space missions.
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Thruster distortion could still make sense if you consider the engines themselves as outputting gas - kind of a localized superheated atmosphere.
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Imagine if we could cast shadows in nebular dust. :pimp:
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Thruster distortion could still make sense if you consider the engines themselves as outputting gas - kind of a localized superheated atmosphere.
It'd dissipate too quickly, if anything, the effect would really, really subtle (and constrained to the borders of the thruster).
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Imagine if we could cast shadows in nebular dust. :pimp:
Ooh, you mean volumetric shadows? ;7
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... so that the dust/gas in the shadow of the ship is darker than the surrounding dust/gas.
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Yeah, right. Find someone to implement volumetric nebulae first.
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Yep, I'm pretty sure that's volumetric shadows (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_volume). :p
Yeah, right. Find someone to implement volumetric nebulae first.
...true. :p
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All you'd need to do is fake the sunshafts with a shader similar to the one you find in Crysis. (hehe, "all you need to do")
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You know, this was done at some point in FSO (though looked a bit sketchy).
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Yep. It was done by that same guy who wrote lots of the original post-processing code. I heard that the sunshaft shader was a fairly buggy and unusable piece of code though.
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Ooooh! Debris shadows!
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And I don't mean to go too deep but is a 'soft' shadow being considered :D.
Negative!! There are no soft-shadows in space! No atmosphere to spread out the light source!
OTOH, for nebulas, planetary, and missions near stars, soft-shadows would make sense. :p
Bull****.
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2e/Diagram_of_umbra%2C_penumbra_%26_antumbra.png)
Edit: oh, maybe that's what you meant by "missions near stars"? Regardless, unless it's a perfect point light, there will be some degree of "soft"
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For some reason, I get no shadows from this build in the F3 lab, and the game instantly crashes upon starting a mission.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJ4Kh6BGSXI&hd=1
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Well, it doesn't crash. It doesn't show shadows, either. My setup is the same as I had for the previous build.
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I was using the new shaders. Unfortunately it seems they must be in a mod dir instead of the normal data dir for them to be recognized.
When I got the shadows working, I noticed that larger submodels/turrets don't cast shadows on my small fighter.
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works very good in Diaspora... less FPS impact too.... great work.
sapphire 6850 here .
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The perfomance drain is lower, that is outstanding. But I still have the disappearing models in Subspace missions that I posted during the first shadow release.
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Um, the example of so called soft shadows in space earlier in the thread is a result of light passing through the ATMOSPHERE of a planet eclipsing its own satellite. The typical example of this is of course the Terra eclipsing Luna. However, when the Luna eclipses Sol, there is no softening around the edges. The closest we get to that is the so-called "Diamond Ring" effect, where the last part of the main body of the sun to go into eclipse seems extra bright against the limb of the moon. The same effect is observed in reverse as the sun comes out of eclipse.
QED, without some sort of atmosphere, shadows in space have hard edges.
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^tyvm. Will report back later with what I find.
@ CaptJosh: Read up on what penumbra shadows are. There are "soft" shadows in space.
(Besides, it's either soft shadows that look nice (and unrealistic) and run nicely, hard shadows at insane performance costs, or hard shadows with pixelated edges)
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Actually, I had forgotten point sources vs planar sources of light. Haven't been in a science class in a while...
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Things run vastly smoother with this build than the previous, though I'd personally still like to see higher framerates. Shadows as they are now really do not scale well when lots of ships are in a mission.
In main-v.sdr, I tried playing around with the 1.0/2048.0 value to see if I could shrink maps and get some performance. It seems to work (shadows are blurrier, game's not crashing, frames might be higher).
tl;dr: Awesome update in shadows code.
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Please stop spamming the thread with this useless soft shadow discussion
- Its getting on my nerves
- I wont implement soft shadows anyway cause of performance
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I dunno about you Valathil, but I thoroughly enjoyed it when my own topic was turned into a HUD pitch ladder slash Lua scripting debate thread.
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I wish there was some way to make sort of a branching discussion thread:
Main Topic
|
Response 1
|
Response 2
|
De-rail / rabbit trail -----------|
| |
Response 3 Response 1
| |
Response 4 Response 2
| |
De-rail /rabbit trail 2 ---------- + --------------------|
| | |
Response 5 Response 3 Response 1
etc, etc.
:nervous:
O, right... I just further de-railed the thread. Don't mind me now. :warp:
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Um, the example of so called soft shadows in space earlier in the thread is a result of light passing through the ATMOSPHERE of a planet eclipsing its own satellite. The typical example of this is of course the Terra eclipsing Luna. However, when the Luna eclipses Sol, there is no softening around the edges. The closest we get to that is the so-called "Diamond Ring" effect, where the last part of the main body of the sun to go into eclipse seems extra bright against the limb of the moon. The same effect is observed in reverse as the sun comes out of eclipse.
QED, without some sort of atmosphere, shadows in space have hard edges.
Actually there's a little bit of fuzziness at the edges due to interference and scattering with the object, but they're much... much sharper than in an atmosphere.
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If the sky isn't very cloudy, shadows in atmosphere can also be really sharp (especially if the sun is shining almost directly from above and the object casting the shadow isn't transparent).
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which part of "SHUT THE **** UP ALREADY!" didnt you idiots understand?
As valathil said already, no soft shadows, no penumbra bull**** etc. performance comes first.
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If you want to discuss soft shadows, do it here (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=78659.new#new). Valathil already said to cut out the off-topic stuff, as he is not going to be implementing soft shadows.
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Perhaps the relevant posts could be moved there, for clarity.
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Is it possible to adjust:
vec3 offset[8]; float off = 1.0/2048.0;
to try and get some performance, without vastly ****ing up the rest of the code?
Possibly...you could just try it and find out. It was previously 4096. (and before that, even larger). But I'm pretty sure that it will just possibly cause issues, since the actual resolution is currently encoded in the engine.
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Well I wasn't expecting the soft shadow thing to get out of hand like that. Frankly its a good thing it was moved into another topic, really poisons the source topic which in all fairness is all about getting this to work. Videos look amazing though, I'm going to try this out sometime. I've got a hefty laptop so it could be interesting to see how well the thing handles shadows on mobile hardware.
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WTF are you talkin'about?
If you haven't noticed we have shadows on FS2... Please,should you be happy at least for 15 minutes before asking new staff like soft shadows?
Great job Valathil ,and thanks to all the people that help him in this feature implementation.
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OMG OMG SOFT SHADOWS WTFBBQFBIBRB!!!!!1!!!!
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Valathil, you know, if you keep this up, they will expect you to fulfill their every dream... it can't last forever, you know... :lol: But, seriously, awesome job! :)
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It's so awesome !!! SOFT SHADOWS are so damn cool :ninja:
(http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/578936979372972721/899F496FE8C2B44EC8A80A3CA18171E95690F83E/)
(http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/578936979389656665/B7174536156A2936973567A6D87DDF04F64BB134/)
(http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/578936979389655105/D53CA25F4A2E57316177F530E0B06ABCD78A1551/)
(http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/578936979389647236/485A9280A3151628B23EDD0A24F062C6C13EDEEC/)
(http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/578936979389657670/8955C1BC1A0257BF434A1F3C9B61B1104869E220/)
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I think I'm... going to keel over and go into a coma now... ..:DX
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MY BODY IS READY
...for this to go into FSO source code proper. This kicks royal amounts of ass. :nod:
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Uh, if so, PLEASE add some option to turn it off in the launcher or something. My game is essentially unplayable with shadows on :(
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Uh, if so, PLEASE add some option to turn it off in the launcher or something. My game is essentially unplayable with shadows on :(
Me too. My system chokes even in peaceful scenes now because of it. =/
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Why do we still suffer the outdated machines ?
In all seriousness, I'm pretty confident it'll end up as an option. In any case, you can still grab old shaders to override the new ones.
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Except that won't alleviate the shadow performance impact, as the shadows are still calculated, even if they aren't rendered.
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Valathil has already said that there will be a quality slider for shadows. So people like me with a glorious master race pc can enjoy those 4096^ shadows like a champ.
And those less forunate can probably turn them off or set them to minimal
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Valathil, I'm curious. How much time went into coding and such from the time you were struck with the idea to the time you had semi-working shadows? This all came about so amazingly quickly! Did you do any work before your declaration at the start of the thread?
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Well i did some research if my idea of using a depth camera would work and found out thats the standard way of doing it =). After starting to code you could say it took me about 15hours over 2 days till i got the first working but totally hacked shadows. Then i spent like 10 hours on **** i didnt have to do as i found out later. After that i started to have a lot of real life work and was often very tired so i didnt want to code. But weekends i always tried to get something done. I dont really know how much work in hours i did now. Its not like i can send you guys a bill so i didnt pay attention to that.
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"After that i started to have a lot of real life"
real what ? :D
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...who are you!? Depth camera? All that makes me think of is a digital camera with two lenses lol.
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...who are you!? Depth camera? All that makes me think of is a digital camera with two lenses lol.
Depth camera: the camera from which the depth is drawn; See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_mapping
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Uh, if so, PLEASE add some option to turn it off in the launcher or something. My game is essentially unplayable with shadows on
For people playing at 1280x760 at the best, 2048x2048 is quite huge even though it's untextured scene, especially since it might be rendered more than once.
I think to reduce the load on lower system following quite easy countermeasures may be deployed :
#Option to lower shadowmap resolution, d'oh!
#Option to lower amounts of light casting shadows (people might be ok with just sun doing it)
#Option to lower LODs for depth test scene, would greatly reduce accuracy of shadowing, but should also relieve low ends system greatly due to great difference of detail on zero and first LOD models
Considering 512x512 scene just from sun, with one LOD up, you would get pixelizated edges on shadows, many minor details would fail to cast shadows, but performance impact would be absolutely minimal, and the effect should be good enough to hide small ships behind capitals, or to make ships like Hecate appear correctly.
Since Valathil provided a patch file, I'll mess it up when I get some time. I've got some older hardware to test how it on it anyway.
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It's just hard for me to think of the player's point of view as a camera in a virtual universe.
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I think that there should be a config or a set of custom launcher flags for that.
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Valathil has already said that there will be a quality slider for shadows. So people like me with a glorious master race pc can enjoy those 4096^ shadows like a champ.
And those less forunate can probably turn them off or set them to minimal
@Dragon, et al: Whatever is happening, it's happening. I wouldn't worry too much about how the performance customizations work before they're actually finished.
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I'm suggesting a way performance could be made customizable. If I suggested it after the feature is done, it'd be pointless.
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I'm suggesting a way performance could be made customizable. If I suggested it after the feature is done, it'd be pointless.
Point.
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You know, this thread is quite amazing. 300+ replies and over 14,000 views in only a month. I haven't seen any topic on HLP meet such excitement ever, next to perhaps the release of WIH. Even in its premature state, this shadow build has created some amazing gameplay visuals. Take the dreamlike wishes and nitpicky criticism with a bricksized grain of salt. The rabble is just excited, and are merely squabbling.
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I haven't seen any topic on HLP meet such excitement ever, next to perhaps the release of WIH.
Just wait for the Geomod thread
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How many times do i have to mention that this thing will be tunable and disableable before everyone gets it. This isnt even 50% finished by my reckoning for christ's sake why should i worry about doing fine tune settings now when i havent even figured out to do all kinds of light sources yet. I mean thanks for the suggestions on how to make it more customizable but do you really think im doing this and havent thought about what could be tuned in a feature i completely thought up and implemented by myself? I mean you could have asked anyone a month ago if there would be shadows in fsopen and everybody would have said NO WAI. So really, settle down till i finish it. This is going to take a while. As I said before im doing this alone and i dont have unlimited time to work on this. The Test builds im providing are as a courtesy to the community and a way to test the code on different hardware setups not really a performance test if it can run on integrated intel gpus or the like. So if your pc cant handle this it never will regardless of any parameters i would expose for tuning. Sucks to be you but thats the way it is.
I think this is why many dev groups keep their content almost completely secret until near-primetime...
I wonder how many people are using these builds without the mentality of pure beta tesrer...
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In that case, more power to him. *raises glass*
Hopefully it will be able to decide which suns to prioritize based on their size in-mission.
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How many times do i have to mention that this thing will be tunable and disableable before everyone gets it. This isnt even 50% finished by my reckoning for christ's sake why should i worry about doing fine tune settings now when i havent even figured out to do all kinds of light sources yet. I mean thanks for the suggestions on how to make it more customizable but do you really think im doing this and havent thought about what could be tuned in a feature i completely thought up and implemented by myself? I mean you could have asked anyone a month ago if there would be shadows in fsopen and everybody would have said NO WAI. So really, settle down till i finish it. This is going to take a while. As I said before im doing this alone and i dont have unlimited time to work on this. The Test builds im providing are as a courtesy to the community and a way to test the code on different hardware setups not really a performance test if it can run on integrated intel gpus or the like. So if your pc cant handle this it never will regardless of any parameters i would expose for tuning. Sucks to be you but thats the way it is.
They are merely afraid that if they wait until the feature is complete, and something is missing that they would like implemented, that it would require too much work to add in, and thus not be implemented, wheras if they mention it before the shadows are even halfway done, at least you have seen their suggestion.
So, basically, I think it is "in b4 it requires a re-write" type of deal here, because no one knows when you will reach the point in your coding process where it would be unfeasible to add in their request.
That's what I see, anyways.
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Exactly. If everybody started making their suggestions after shadows are finished, there's a chance (a rather likely one) they'd be told that it'd be too much work to make any changes.
Since now nothing is set in stone, everybody's discussing how they could be developed.
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I don't think Valathil is too dumb to forget those. Any developer, have to think about dynamic function with a lot of parameter so you can fine tuning every bit of your code without using static values hard coded.
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It's just quite rude to make requests that have been repeatedly made and responded to earlier in the thread...
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GetSatisfaction.com time, anyone? :p
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great now the admin is spamming in my thread
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If you call spamming the provision of a possible solution to an unwelcome barrage of requests, then yes, I am spamming and loving it. :)
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GetSatisfaction.com time, anyone? :p
That's actually probably a good idea. FSO could make good use of a GetSatisfaction account.
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great now the admin is spamming in my thread
On HLP, if your thread starts attracting a significant amount of off-topic chatter, it reinforces the fact that you've done something cool. :D
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That's actually probably a good idea. FSO could make good use of a GetSatisfaction account.
Shame it costs so much... :-/
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That's actually probably a good idea. FSO could make good use of a GetSatisfaction account.
Shame it costs so much... :-/
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1576935/open-source-alternative-to-uservoice-or-get-satisfaction
http://alternativeto.net/software/get-satisfaction/?license=free
http://www.digitalking.it/en/2011/02/28/alternative-gratuite-a-get-satisfaction-e-uservoice/
EDIT: And, sorry Valathil... any mod wanna split out feature requests to one thread and Get Satisfaction discussion to another? :nervous:
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All Off-Topic ramblings and whines and requests and what have you have been split, so carry on here with whatever.
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Wow. Only 1/4 of that thread was on topic?
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lmao. No wonder Valathil was so pissed.
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http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1576935/open-source-alternative-to-uservoice-or-get-satisfaction
http://alternativeto.net/software/get-satisfaction/?license=free
http://www.digitalking.it/en/2011/02/28/alternative-gratuite-a-get-satisfaction-e-uservoice/
Like :yes:
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I'll use this thread instead of the other to once again commend Valathil and the rest of the team helping him out on this amazing feature!
FreeSpace will never be the same with these improvements! It's a wonderful introduction to this new decade of SCP.
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I just found out that RAGE the new mega awesome super 3D Engine from ID has no dynamic shadows. They use lightmaps. AHAHAHAHAAHHAAHHAAHAHAHAHAHHAAHHAAHHAAHHAHA
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they have dyanamic shadows. i read a post about that someplace else and reloaded my copy to see but there are dynamic shadows in the game for moving things and characters and vehicles
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I just found out that RAGE the new mega awesome super 3D Engine from ID has no dynamic shadows. They use lightmaps. AHAHAHAHAAHHAAHHAAHAHAHAHAHHAAHHAAHHAAHHAHA
Not true. It uses shadow maps.
Maybe statics like terrain or buildings are still lightmapped, but everything that moves has shadows on it, including self shadowing.
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I just found out that RAGE the new mega awesome super 3D Engine from ID has no dynamic shadows. They use lightmaps. AHAHAHAHAAHHAAHHAAHAHAHAHAHHAAHHAAHHAAHHAHA
Yeah, just look at the game, it looks so bad...
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The video i saw had no shadows except the prebaked ones. Maybe a hardware thing DX 11 or sumthing
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DcKLmZYWFw
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I get an option to "Remove the Topic" for this thread in particular.
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FreeSpace Open is better than a AAA, brand new, id FPS engine, is how I choose to interpret this. :D
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FreeSpace Open is better than a AAA, brand new, id FPS engine, is how I choose to interpret this. :D
big news there :p
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What? Don't make me laugh. Please.
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Stay classy Luis.
"What's this? Someone posts something that seems unreasonable. Well it surely can't be a bit of exaggeration for the sake of levity. No no, this guy must mean what he says with absolute certainty. He must be a moron, and I must inform him of how wrong he is. Furthermore, I must be sure to use the most condescending tone possible, so that people will be more receptive to my argument."
But sorry, I forgot. HLP, srs bsns, no fun allowed. Got it. :rolleyes:
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The whole idea of megatextures is great in my opinion, I wonder if something like that can be emulated with LODs (like more LOD levels?). I personally really enjoy(ed) RAGE and hope there's lessons in texturing to be taken from it.
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Sometimes it is difficult to be sure of someone else's tone. I've been on the wrong side of that stick as well many times.
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The whole idea of megatextures is great in my opinion, I wonder if something like that can be emulated with LODs (like more LOD levels?). I personally really enjoy(ed) RAGE and hope there's lessons in texturing to be taken from it.
Probably not. The problem with MegaTexture is that it's very very good at doing vast streamed environments, for the kind of mostly empty, mostly static kind of graphics you get in FSO it's decidedly unsuited. Not to mention that asset creation gets a lot more complicated, from what I heard about the technology in Carmacks' presentation.
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So, one thing I'm wondering is how glow maps are going to interact with shadow maps. From the screenshots I've seen it seems like the glow maps might also be under the shadow maps (though, I could be completely wrong, since I can't look for myself). Is it difficult to make glow maps show despite shadow effects?
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That is what is happening right now. Glow maps are not affected by shadows in the slightest.
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Awesome.
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Megatextures would only be useful in another "moon mission" like we find in WiH. Even then however, a better texture work could easily provide a much easier alternative.
In a third alternative, I remember a technique used in an old game, "Black and White" to get different textures based on the zoom level (or distance to shape). There is a larger texture that assures that the overall world doesn't look tiled, and then there are smaller textures that take care of the details. The smaller textures fade and disappear when you zoom out to negate the tiling effect.
(I use a similar approach in my architectural renderings so that the greenery does not appear tiled and exactly equal for hundreds of meters).
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Its called detail mapping. The first Deus Ex did it also
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isnt it basically LOD's applied in a different sense than the usual?
(i'm not too familiar with 3D engines outside of FSO and FSO-related nuances)
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no you cant really say that its more like mipmapping but instead of doing one BIG texture thats sampled down as you go away from it it layers a tiled small but high resolution map over the low res texture thats already there. A model analogy would be that at a certain distance submodels are not drawn at all.
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It's not possible under the current engine to do such a thing, is it? I'm almost sure it isn't, but there might be a loophole somewhere that I'm not counting.