[--Steve-O--]

ok heres what i'm getting at...
what i want to try and make is a cockpit panel that is 100% transparent but will show a non or semi transparent glow map to simulated a holographic display. i tried it once and couldn't get it to work, i am however quite sure i wasn't doing the transparency right, i'm just starting to finally tinker with alpha channels and such. so how would i do this? or is it even possible?

[Wanderer]

IIRC (don't have time to check from the code) the alpha for the HUD is forced by the code. Bright elements gain alpha of 240 and dim elements alpha of 176. Latter one is something that can (sort of) be changed in the non-trunk build i fairly recently posted.

[--Steve-O--]

not trying to change the hud itself, oh no, that kinda seems like dancing with the devil, thanks for the input though. i want this for the actual cockpit model, like the fighter readout panel in the middle of the screen shot for example. i want to make the panel itself transparent and have only the glow map show to produce the holographic effect. when i tried it last, the glow map seemed to adopt the parent maps alpha, i tried it as PCX green as well, didn't work. if at all possible i want to retain the glow map idea, with some fred work you can do something like when your fighter is disabled all the glow maps turn off, leaving nothing but blank screens, make it feel like "wow, my s**t is really broken...bummer".
hmm... looking at the pic, i really need to make some pilot models....

[Herra Tohtori]

not trying to change the hud itself, oh no, that kinda seems like dancing with the devil, thanks for the input though. i want this for the actual cockpit model, like the fighter readout panel in the middle of the screen shot for example. i want to make the panel itself transparent and have only the glow map show to produce the holographic effect. when i tried it last, the glow map seemed to adopt the parent maps alpha, i tried it as PCX green as well, didn't work. if at all possible i want to retain the glow map idea, with some fred work you can do something like when your fighter is disabled all the glow maps turn off, leaving nothing but blank screens, make it feel like "wow, my s**t is really broken...bummer".
hmm... looking at the pic, i really need to make some pilot models....

Wah!

Well, you could of course make the diffuse map transparent where it should be, and partially opaque where you want some glowmap intensity.

Would using greyscaled version of a glowmap as alpha mask for the corresponding diffuse texture work? If it's too opaque, reduce the alpha intensity, but that should work. At least as far as I can see.

[--Steve-O--]

i'll play around with that, its good to know its at least possible.