[Lynx]

Would it be possible to up the background star limit to 4000-6000, with 3-5 diiferent brightness stages for the stars? I always felt that background nebulas were overused in almost every space sim, with Freespace2 beeing a prime example. I'd like to make sci-fi movie style missions with vast starfields and dim background nebulas as you see in some sci-fi movies or real life.
As far as I know, the stars  are quite cpu-intensive to render, but it would be handled the same adjustable way as now, and newer hardwar would have no problem with it. And don't tell me that 6000 stars is too much, because in a dark clear night you can see 5000-7000 stars in the sky, and that's just one half of the sky.

[Flipside]

Well, a lot of these gorgeous backgrounds in Sci-Fi are actually images mapped onto a sphere. Very very very high resoution images.

I'm not sure Freespace would get on too well with a big sphere POF around the play area with an enormous texture on it, but it would probably lack something.

A far better idea is to wait till Bobb can find time to get those animated backgrounds working, and then bug the SCP team for a more compressed form of ANI file

Flipside

[IceFire]

Actually....FS's starfields are mapped onto a sphere.  Or a box...I forget which.  But I know Dark was playing with them at one point.

[Flipside]

Hmmmmm... if it generates an image, it would make sense, better than tracking hundreds of the individually.
IF that is the case, I suppose things are only theoretically limited by the motion blur?

Flipside

[Sticks]

Actually, from what I can tell, the stars are projected into a spheroid space which is used to determine where the location of the star on-screen was, and where it is now.

The problem with the way FS does the motion blurring is that for every single star it has to call a function to draw a line between where the star was and where it is, as well as antialias that line. That's about 2000+ calls of that function alone per frame.

I've been working on a better system, but so far, no luck.

[bottomfan]

In real life all stars have diffrent magnitude and color. Would be real nice eyecandy if fs2_open could have this too.

check out Celestia (http://www.shatters.net/celestia/), space is beatifull

[TopAce]

Originally posted by IceFire
....FS's starfields are mapped onto a sphere.  Or a box...

That's a sphere. Take an example as how you can make backgrounds in FRED with the SHIFT-I window.

But the beloved SCPers can increase the maximum number of stars, can't they? If they could increase the maximal number of polygons per model, or maximal number of multi-part turrets and so on, they can surely do this slight number increase.

[Flipside]

That's sounds like an incredibly CPU intensive way of doing a starfield just to get motion blur!
Good luck with upgrading it Sticks, and if you get the chance, it would be great if you could add one or two of the features suggested here (variable colour/brightness etc).

Flipside

[Fineus]

I suppose this is a hell of a long shot but would it be possible to do it by some particle generation process? I'm thinking of some end result in a similar sence to Star Trek 2s star fields at the end of the film - the part where Spock is delivering the closing lines - the camera pans round a star field and as it does so the stars blur. I believe the effect was generated by lots of little fibreoptics on black velvet that the camera panned around.

Either way, it looked pretty neat - I think particle effects could do the same. Granted I've no idea how hard this would be to achieve but in theory you could have complete control over the brightness, color and size of each particle - allowing for 3D suns and so on actually in game as opposed to textures on the inside of the sphere. These would obviously be so far off that you could never reach them but still the effect would be the same.

Possible? Or am I being silly

[bottomfan]

3D stars seams a bit overkill, dosn't it?

[Taristin]

Originally posted by Kalfireth
Or am I being silly

Always.

But maybe to your post?

[Ace]

Originally posted by IceFire
Actually....FS's starfields are mapped onto a sphere.  Or a box...I forget which.  But I know Dark was playing with them at one point.

It's a sphere.

[Hippo]

I already found a solution for the lack of stars problem... Give me a minute to find it, and someone to upload it since Sectorgame is down, and i'll release it to the public.

[Taristin]

*raises hand* FTP access to Telefragged. Hardly ever down.

[Hippo]

Originally posted by Raa Tor'h
*raises hand* FTP access to Telefragged. Hardly ever down.

If i email it to you, will you post it? I'll need your email... PM me...

[bottomfan]

Flying around in this kind of space would be cool.

Images are 100 - 150 KB.
Backdrop with Fuzzy Points
Backdrop with Point
Backdrop with Scaled Disces

[mikhael]

Allow me to direct you to the very simple, very effective, very CPU-cheap Independence War 2 method of doing starfields. Go grab the demo, play it, be awed by its the simplicity of the system and the resulting beauty.

[Hippo]

I uploaded it though freewebs, and its HERE... (right click, save-as)

You will need to put it into wherever the nebula backrounds may go in FS_Open... And make a table entry, and then just use any backround randomizer, or manually place it wherever you want more stars... (NOTE; I made it for FS1, before i realized it wouldn't be insertable... So i don't know where you would put it since i have been with FS1 more then FS2)

This is public release, but f you use it in a campaign, please give me credit.